


if i am a stranger

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Age Reversal, F/M, M/M, Past Eggsy/Other, Past Roxy/Other, Post V-Day, Reincarnation, Tilde/Eggsy are FWB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-10-19 15:34:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 79,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10642809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: Harry Hart dies in 2015. Twenty-something years later, young Victor Arden pops up wearing Harry's face and knowing things he shouldn't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The effort to begin wrapping up some currently existing WIPs begins. This only existed on tumblr before, but I needed to get it into a more organized structure. Posting what was previously published on tumblr so far, but the majority of this has been written and will go up in the coming weeks.
> 
> Also, I officially dedicate this story to #AgeGapApril, started by deepdarkwaters on tumblr, because this story features poor Eggsy suffering not one but two of them, bless.
> 
> Many thanks to @your-eggcellency for providing the original idea. I sort of took it and ran off a cliff with it, as I am wont to do.

Bors dies on a mission in Peru when Eggsy is scaling the side of an eighty-storey high-rise in Shanghai. A car crash of all things. He liked Bors in as much as he could like any of his fellow Kingsman agents outside of Roxy: which is to say, he never really took the time to get to know the man in the ten years Bors held the title.

Roxy’s a different story though, holding herself together by sheer will alone when he gets back. She waits at the bottom of the stairs for him, eyes red, genuine smile in place that only wavers just once.

“Come on, Rox. Let’s have it then.” He opens his arms and she easily falls into them and buries her face in the crook of his shoulder.

“What a shit day,” she pulls back just enough to succinctly say. “He used to ask me out any Friday we were both in. I always turned him down.”

“Do you regret having not given him a chance?”

“Hmm, no, not really. But still.”

Eggsy doesn’t know how many tribute brandies he’s had in the last twenty years. Ten, perhaps? This would be eleven. To think there had been a seventeen-year record streak before that, at least until James and Harry had gone and fucked it up. But then, their generation had enjoyed a relatively stable world built on the backs of what surely had been rockier times after the world wars.

Roxy, Eggsy, and all the agents who came after them didn’t have that luxury.

Merlin, still going strong, probably out of spite at this point, deplores the way Eggsy chooses his recruits, accusing him of going for, without fail, the ones who are going to be trouble.

“I look for potential,” Eggsy once tried to defend. “The ones who will work hard for their success, not think things should simply be handed to them. Besides, if someone hadn’t given me a chance all those years ago, where would you all be?”

That usually settled the matter until the next time Eggsy stirred up the pot. His candidates have always made it pretty far, though he’s yet to place one at the table. He always, though, makes sure they’re well taken care of after they leave.

This time isn’t any different. Eggsy trawls through Scotland Yard’s database for anyone who looks promising, and when that doesn’t bear any fruit, he reluctantly moves on to the military.

It’s in the Army database where one catches his eye: Victor Arden, regrettably of aristocracy, but…currently sitting in remand for misconduct towards a superior officer. Eggsy always had a soft spot for the rebellious ones. The lack of respect for authority is what really seals the deal.

Yet when he idly pulls up the full detail on his laptop, he nearly chokes on a mouthful of scotch.

Because the person staring back at him from the screen could be, Eggsy would swear on his own grave, the spitting image of a young—a so very, very young—Harry Hart.

 

_____

 

“…well,” is all Merlin can say once Eggsy shows him Victor’s file. “You’re not wrong.”

They’ve pulled up Harry’s photo from when he’d been an ickle Kingsman recruit and pitted it side by side next to Victor’s. The resemblance between the two is, emphasis absolutely needed, _fucking uncanny_ , from the square jaw to the piercing brown eyes to that ridiculous fluffy hair Harry had suffered before learning to tame it with styling products. They could be identical twins were it not for the fact Harry Hart had been born over seventy years ago, and Victor Arden had been born—

“Seven and a half months after V-Day,” Merlin reads off, squinting even through his glasses. He’s yet to admit he needs to up his prescription. “One of the _victory babies_. Oh dear, he was even featured in that saccharine documentary….”

Ah, Eggsy remembers that one. Commissioned by the government as a way to showcase the bravery of British citisens after global-wide tragedy. Infrastructure had been rebuilt. Society had been upended and remade to appear more equal. Policy had been examined and improved. Families had sprung up and multiplied, which was the polite way of saying a lot of couples had shagged.

Merlin pulls up a video clip of a pretty, fresh-faced woman with blond hair and the same eyes as her son, whose title card at the bottom reads _Lydia Anne Markwell Arden_.

“My husband and I had been trying for a child for over two years prior to V-Day with no luck,” Lydia says earnestly. “But something must have happened that day, perhaps a shock to the system, because I learned I was pregnant less than two months later. We named our son Victor because he’s our little victor, isn’t he? He was even almost two months early, but was born perfectly healthy! Just impatient, which he still is, by the way. He was born ready to conquer the world….”

“Christ,” Eggsy mutters when Merlin hits the stop button with a great show of force. “Bet he got a lot of stick for that one.”

“Well, we know he can’t be Harry because this one shows up to things early, doesn’t he?” Merlin’s wry cant makes Eggsy smile in spite of himself, because it’s all too easy to fall into wistful reminiscence and nostalgia otherwise.

“This one also punched his SO in the face after an argument, according to the charges,” Eggsy points out, reading the extremely divisive accounts of the incident from both the SO and Victor. Victor’s is decidedly more colourful and insouciant and so very…well, Eggsy can’t help comparing him to Harry now that the idea’s taken root.

Merlin must see the trajectory of his thoughts because he turns in his chair to give Eggsy the full breadth of his glare. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, the answer is no.”

“Whatever it is…you don’t know what I’m thinking!”

“I know exactly what you’re thinking. I know you.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking of making him your recruit.”

“I…yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking,” Eggsy admits. “But look at him! Top marks, a mountain of A-Levels, a…er, ballroom dancing champion, apparently…and an exemplary military record, well, barring this recent infraction.”

“A laundry list of school write-ups for disrespecting authority, skipping class, showing up to school on a, Jesus, an Icelandic pony he claimed to have liberated from his neighbour?” Merlin shakes his head. “That recent infraction, by the way, carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.”

“Ten bloody years?” Eggsy squawks. “For what, a love tap?”

“Given his family name, the offended party will probably be talked down and he’ll likely just be dishonourably discharged,” Merlin reasons. “He can go back to his life of waltzes and tangos.”

“You’ve got to admit he’s an ideal Kingsman recruit, with or without the arrest.” Eggsy scowls. “...and the, er, pony business.”

“He also bears an alarming resemblance to the man you had once drunkenly confessed ‘you were madly in love with’ and that you’d ‘never love another like him again’,” Merlin says. Eggsy can practically hear the cringe-worthy air quotes.

“That was fifteen years ago!” Eggsy hisses, then looks around frantically, paranoid someone might have overheard. “Obviously, I’ve moved on!”

“One failed marriage and a string of some, what are we up to now, thirty-five?…relationships later….”

“You’re keeping track?!” Eggsy nearly screeches. At this rate, he’ll need to start sucking down helium if his voice goes any higher.

“I make it my business to know everything about every one of my agents,” Merlin says smugly.

“Roxy’s been through just as many relationships as I’ve done. This life isn’t exactly conducive to long-term romance.”

“But wouldn’t it be perfect if only you could find someone who you didn’t have to keep secrets from. Another Kingsman agent, perhaps?” Merlin says knowingly. “And if he happens to look like the doppelganger of your ill-fated love, so much the better, is it?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Eggsy tells him flatly. “Christ, Harry—I mean, _Victor_ , is practically still a child. Nothing untoward is going to happen. I just want to…to show him how much he could do with his life. Look at how bored he is! If he’s half as good as Harry was, he’ll be an excellent agent.”

“That may very well be. But I’ve heard these arguments before, Eggsy,” Merlin says, turning serious. “That last one didn’t work out so well.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Eggsy insists before he stands up straighter and adjusts the minute imperfections in his suit that were caused from hunching over Merlin’s desk. “Anyway, I’m scheduled to go up to the base this afternoon. Have myself a little chat.”

Merlin sighs, peeling off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I can’t forbid you from your choice in candidate, but I must warn you that I can’t see this ending in any way but badly.”

“Well, it just so happens that proving people wrong is in my wheelhouse,” Eggsy says. It’s what he’s had to do, tooth and claw, ever since Harry had once given him a keen look and entreated Eggsy to follow him. “You’ll see.”

 

_____

 

When Eggsy arrives at the installation in York, he’s shown into a meeting room that strongly reminds him of the police station interrogation rooms of his misspent youth, though this one doesn’t have a two-way mirror or an air of taxpayer neglect. There’s a simple table built for durability rather than style, six chairs, and a sullen young man seated in one of them.

Eggsy finds himself caught in the doorway, unable to move forward. He thought he’d been prepared to face the boy, but seeing a photograph and being in the presence of the living, breathing real thing are two wholly separate phenomena. 

He used to review Harry’s old footage in his downtime between missions under the excuse that his late mentor still had much to teach him, but really it was because he’d been, as Merlin so enjoyed pointing out, heartbroken. Grieving. Still clinging to the prospect of lost love. But he’d also been curious about the life Harry had before they ever met. He never really got to know the man, did he? Not his deepest desires, his failed dreams, or his biggest regrets, save but one. Sometimes he’d have a chance to see Harry in the recordings as he passed by a mirror or stopped in front of one to adjust his appearance at all ages. Little quiet moments of living where it had felt like some of the real Harry had shone through.

What he feels now, studying this Victor Arden before him, is like someone’s gone and assembled all those little moments and brought them to life, put them in a person, all the mannerisms and habits, and sat him in this room Eggsy’s just walked into. There’s a boulder-sized aching pressure in his chest. He has to lean against the door frame to prop himself up.

There was a certain emotion Harry could always convey so well with just a look. Vulnerability, maybe. No matter how neutral he could compose the rest of his face, as still and unyielding as stone, his eyes had been softer, somber, warm. Even as he had been taking Eggsy to task for his life choices, there had been something like understanding in his gaze, even sadness, that had kept Eggsy from punching Harry in the nose right there in the Black Prince and storming off, more angered and embittered at the injustice of the world.

Victor’s eyes had snapped up to him as soon as the door opened, as lively as embers, but now a small divot appears between his brows the longer Eggsy remains silent and unmoving. What to make of this posh stranger who clearly wasn’t military of any sort?

“Second Lieutenant Arden,” Eggsy says, finally finding the impetus to step into the room, come round the table, and pull out a chair. Under the guise of adjusting his glasses, he turns on the audio jammer embedded within them.

“Just Victor is fine. I imagine soon I won’t be bearing the rank anyway,” Victor says. His voice is a bit higher than Harry’s, more youthful, but it’s bears the same cadence and intonations. The same line of steel that underlies the graceful notes of his speech.

“You don’t seem bothered by that fact.”

Victor shrugs. “I can’t change things now, can I?”

It’s an almost perfect facade, Eggsy notes. The affected apathy. The carelessness. “My name is Eggsy Unwin.”

“Eggsy,” Victor repeats with a trace of incredulity.

“A very old and beloved nickname. I don’t think I could answer to anything else at this point.” Which is mostly true, except for his own codename, of course.

“Alright,” Victor agrees, just a little more wary.

“I want to know why you punched your superior officer in the face.”

Victor doesn’t even miss a beat. “I was only trying to improve it, but it was truly beyond all hope.”

Eggsy smiles. “You do so remind me of someone I used to know.”

Victor frowns. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“I know,” Eggsy says.

“Why are you here? You’re not from Legal Services.”

“I’m here to speak with you, assess your qualities, and perhaps offer you a chance.” Eggsy leans forward, folding his hands over the cool plane of the table.

“A chance for what?”

“To really make something of yourself.”

Victor scoffs, already shaking his head. “I think I’ll be alright, thank you.”

“Will you?” Eggsy challenges. “Once you’re dismissed from service, what’s awaiting you back home? A position in Daddy’s bank? A life of charity galas and garden parties before settling down with your pedigree wife and adding a few more thoroughbreds to the endangered nobility?”

Victor clenches his jaw so tightly, a spasm flickers across his cheek. That burning fire in his eyes flares up in Eggsy’s direction. “And what makes your offer so much better?”

“I’m part of an organisation that strives to maintain global stability.”

“MI6?” Victor sceptically asks.

“No. We’re not affiliated with any government agency.”

Now Victor just looks confused. 

“Have you ever heard of Kingsman?”

“The tailors,” Victor answers flatly.

“That’s only how it began.” And with that, Eggsy launches into the whole shock and awe routine he’s perfected over several iterations. He hadn’t paid much attention to any of it the first time Harry had presented it to him, but Victor is a much more avid listener. To be fair to his younger self, he’d never gone down a secret dressing room lift before.

“So I’m offering you a chance to join us,” he concludes. “It’ll be the most dangerous, heartbreaking, and rewarding job you’ve ever had. Provided, of course, you tell me why you punched your commanding officer.”

Victor simply stares at him. It’s a lot to take in. He’s quicker than most, though, when he finally opens his mouth to say, “I tripped and his face caught my fist, very accommodating bloke. I just have to ask, why me?”

“You’re smart. You’re talented.” Eggsy’s shrug is as careless as the one Victor had given him. “You can say what you want now, but your record speaks for itself: you do want to do something meaningful with your life, it’s not about the money or the prestige, else you would have gone down the road laid down by your peers.” He tilts his head. “So. Interested?”

To his credit, Victor appears to really think it over. The frown deepens on his face. His thumb repeatedly rubs at a stain on the table. He grits his teeth when he admits, “As you can see, I’ve rather run out of choices.”

It’s not the ringing endorsement he’d been hoping for, but Eggsy would take what he could get. Still, best not to let him entirely off the hook. “Then?” he prompts expectantly.

Victor sighs in resignation, not resentment as Eggsy would have done. “He was being intolerably cruel to one of the cadets. I wanted to teach him a lesson.”

“Manners maketh man,” Eggsy whispers, colour draining from his face.

“Sorry?” Victor asks.

“I’ll take care of your SO,” Eggsy tells him. “He won’t be a problem to anyone any longer.”

Victor blinks, opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it again. Something must be mulling around his brain, a hundred different questions most likely, but he eschews them all to simply say, meaningfully, “Thank you.”

 

_____

 

In the taxi on the way down to London, Victor turns to him. Eggsy can feel the weight of his stare for sometime before the boy finds the courage to speak. “ _Vulgaria_ , isn’t it?”

Eggsy throws him a questioning look.

“William Horman. _Vulgaria_. What you said earlier. ‘Manners maketh man.’”

“I wouldn’t know,” Eggsy admits, only partially ashamed by that fact. “I heard an old friend say it once. I’ve never bothered to look up where it was from, and I’ve certainly never read anything named _Vulgaria_ , though by the sounds of it, I feel like maybe I’m missing out on something exciting.”

He gives Victor a smirk, which Victor returns only faintly, and they lapse into silence once more as Victor turns back to the idyllic English countryside passing by and Eggsy goes back to enjoying his very fine adult beverage.

Eggsy almost misses it, the low, barely intelligible mutter.

“Don’t remember having read it either.”

 

_____

 

Late the next morning, Eggsy finds Victor sitting on Kingsman’s long stretch of frost-glazed grass, staring up at him with disgruntlement.

“Soooo…” Eggsy begins conversationally, sticking his hands into his trouser pockets to ward off the chill. “How was your first night?”

“I’m competing for a spot amidst a bunch of Arthurian roleplayers, we were nearly—gleefully, I might add—drowned by a man who named himself after a wizard, and now we’re being consoled with puppies,” Victor tells him, unimpressed.

“Is that right?” Eggsy asks, barely able to keep the smile off his face. He casts a look about to see if Victor’s chosen furry companion is romping about anywhere in the vicinity, but when he doesn’t see hide nor tail of one, he turns back to Victor in mounting dread. “And yours? Where’s yours?”

Victor sniffs, and that’s when Eggsy notices the front flaps of his boiler suit moving. A tan, rat-like nose peeks out through the opening.

“Oh no…” Eggsy says, but it’s too late. The small head of a chihuahua appears and peers up at Eggsy with big bulbous eyes like he’s personally offended its existence. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Really?”

“Sir Marmite is intelligent and loyal,” Victor defends, cradling the visibly trembling creature closer to his chest like he’s afraid Eggsy will take it away.

“ _Sir Marmite_? Are you joking?”

Victor mouth turns down defiantly.

“Alright, look,” Eggsy says, shaking a finger at him “You don’t have a leg to stand on, making light of our codenames.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the name I’ve chosen!” Victor says, offended.

“Oh, of course not.” Exasperated, Eggsy turns and starts back towards the manor. “Enjoy those fifteen-mile jogs with your little rat dog. You can’t carry it, either!”

Merlin and Roxy are waiting within one of the lounges with windows overlooking the training grounds. Merlin used to spend most of the morning outside overseeing the recruits’ morning and afternoon drills, but age has forced him to finally prioritise a good roaring fire in the hearth. He also won’t admit he’s having Roxy assist him in the trials this time because his stamina for round-the-clock oversight of a bunch of vigourous twenty-somethings isn’t what it used to be.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Eggsy asks when he first enters, immediately moving to the room’s bar for a cordial.

“No,” Merlin says, not looking up from his ubiquitous clipboard. “Because I only believe in things which have been scientifically proven or at least strongly theorised.”

“Oh come off it,” Eggsy says, bringing the glass to his lips. “You’ve seen and spoken to him. You can’t possibly tell me that boy out there with the stupid dog with the even stupider name isn’t Harry.”

“I can and I will because talk of otherwise will get you benched and put on a full psych eval,” Merlin says, infuriatingly calm. “I’ll grant you the similarities are...unsettling. But it’s more likely confirmation bias.”

“What are the chances that a man who dies and a baby who’s conceived on the very same day—”

“We don’t know if Victor was conceived on V-Day, and given the maths, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that—”

“—look, talk, and act exactly the same?” Eggsy finishes, ignoring Merlin, waving his glass hard enough to rattle the ice about. “Well, what say you, Rox?”

Roxy, who had been preoccupied with gazing out the window, turns around, arching a brow. “I never met your Harry, Eggs,” she reminds him. “I’m not one to ask.”

“I watched the footage of the water test,” Eggsy says to them both.

“You don’t have the clearance for that,” Merlin sighs, all to no avail.

“It’s like he knew exactly what to do. No hesitation. You saw how he immediately identified the plant and saved him first, then straight to the mirror.” He turns to Merlin. “Your little intimidation lecture on failed teamwork wasn’t half so impactful this time, was it? Stole the wind from your sails?”

“He’s not wrong,” Roxy admits to Merlin. “What happened wasn’t just extremely unusual. It’s never actually happened before.”

“Did Harry or anyone in his group rescue their plant?” Eggsy asks.

Merlin now regards them both with extreme annoyance. “No.”

“See?” Eggsy says as if the answer is abundantly clear. “He _remembered_ from last time. He’s got this one in the bag, I’m telling you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count mine out just yet,” Roxy says. Five of her candidates have been placed at the table so far, three of whom had beaten out Eggsy’s on the last round. It still remains somewhat of a sore point. “Angeline is very resourceful.”

“Angeline also burst into tears when she chose her puppy,” Merlin says, because he’s not above being petty now that he views Roxy’s tolerance of Eggsy latest harebrained notion as a betrayal. And, just to make sure Eggsy doesn’t go completely unscathed either, adds, giving Eggsy a dry look, “It was a rottweiler though, which was an excellent choice. A real dog.”

Eggsy rolls his eyes. “Oh, do shut up.” Fucking _Marmite_.

He’ll never get over the way Roxy doesn’t just laugh, she _cackles_. This time it’s while laying a conciliatory hand on his shoulder. “Ignore him. He’s gotten cranky in his dotage.”

“I have not,” Merlin corrects. “I’ve always been this way.”

“Have you got plans tonight?” Eggsy asks her, struggling to unwind just a bit. “Could go down to the pub for a round.” Or five.

Roxy gives him an apologetic look. “Mmm, can’t tonight, sorry. John’s bringing the girls over for the weekend. They told me to tell you how much they miss Yumi, by the way. You could ask for her to spend the holidays here, you know.”

“That would require having a conversation that lasts longer than angry shouting and insults.”

“Or you could let your daughter grow up halfway around the world without ever really knowing her father,” Roxy says, resting her chin on his shoulder to give him pleading eyes. She still does them annoyingly well. “Who is alive and well, I might add, plus or minus a pickled liver.”

He pointedly takes a large mouthful of his drink, but relents enough to say, albeit very reluctantly, “I’ll...ask.”

“Lovely,” Roxy smiles, releasing him from her tractor beam gaze.

 

_____

 

Daisy’s steps coming down the stairs of the lecture hall slow as soon as she spots him. “Oh no, what’s happened now?”

Which immediately saps most of his cheerful big brother camaraderie and good will. “What? Can’t your big brother come by uni for a surprise visit?”

Daisy makes it clear she isn’t buying it. All the women in his life, honestly.

By the time he gets over his offence, she’s already texting someone. “What are you doing?”

“Informing Imogen I won’t be making it to the party tonight,” Daisy says. “On account of my big brother needing someone to eat ice cream with and have a good cry because he hasn’t got any friends.”

Harsh, but not untrue. He used to have friends, even did his best to keep up with them after joining Kingsman, but it was the sort of life that didn’t lend itself well to keeping commitments for birthdays and weddings and baby showers, to say nothing of sharing confidences and the increasing lack of common interests. So Eggsy simply let his friends drift out of his life and hadn’t bothered restocking the pond, so to speak. He instantly gained a whole new set with the wife, but just as quickly lost them when he appended her status with _ex-_.

Eggsy feigns being struck in the side, holding onto his ribs. “Stick it in a little deeper, why don’t you?”

“I don’t mind really. It was going to be a boring party anyway.” She loops her arms through his and forces them to start walking. “Geoffrey wasn’t even going to be there.”

“Remind me who that one is again?” 

“Lansdowne. Tall. Fit. Very good taste in music,” Daisy says, her tone sinking into the dreamy quality of a woman who was already planning the design of her wedding invitations.

Eggsy makes a note to run his name through the database and learn his connections, daily schedule, and possible points of blackmail. “Sounds like a catch. Wouldn’t mind meeting him myself,” he teases.

That earns him a sharp smack on the shoulder, which, _ouch_. Daisy’s got some fists on her. “Fucking hell, Eggs, you could be his father.”

“First of all, watch your fucking _language_.” Daisy rolls her eyes. “Second, are you implying I’m old?”

“Yes,” Daisy says, matter-of-factly. “Unless you’re purposely angling for a mid-life crisis induced hobby as a Sugar Daddy.”

Suddenly, he regrets ever turning to his sister for anything ever. She is ruthless and cruel, when all he has ever given her was indulgence and comfort.

When he doesn’t reply to her sharp jab, she manages to look slightly contrite. “So tell me what’s really troubling you,” she gently urges.

“A friend I thought I lost long ago…” he begins, but oh, how best to put it in a manner that won’t have Daisy phoning for mental services? “Has recently come back into my life in a...rather unexpected way. Nothing’s the same, of course, and it’s been long enough where we’ve both changed significantly, but still...still there are moments when I look at said person and see....”

“What could have been?” Daisy supplies.

“Right.”

“Well,” Daisy says, turning the whole matter over in her mind for a few moments. “What does he think?”

“Who says it’s a…” Daisy gives him a look. “...Fine. It’s a he. And that’s...well. That’s a question. The whole thing may have been a little...one-sided. At the time.”

“Oh Eggs,” Daisy sighs, looking at him like he’s the hopeless fuckup he, in fact, actually is, but she still loves him anyway.

“Do you remember the time when you used to look up to me like I could do no wrong?” Eggsy asks mournfully. “I miss that.”

“Me too,” Daisy commiserates. “But we all have to grow up sometime, even if it happens later for some than others.” He ignores the sharp glance in his direction. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with at least extending the hand of friendship, if that’s still in the cards.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Friendship. Mentorship. That’s what it would have to be in this lifetime, Eggsy thinks. The qualities he had once fallen for in Harry—his worldliness, his charm, the way he had believed in Eggsy when no one else would—were all the qualities he’s supposed to be in possession of now. If Victor is, in fact, Harry reborn, it still doesn’t change the reality that Eggsy is still some twenty years older, the one with all the experience and supposed wisdom, even if he still sometimes feels like that foolish, hot-tempered chav he had once been. Turns out, wisdom and maturity didn’t work like light switches to simply be flipped on at the appropriate milestone ages, casting a light upon all the obstacles that lay ahead.

He’d never felt like the mature, older, wiser one before. He still confides in his twenty-one year old sister, for Christ’s sake. 

Now, however, like the proverbial scales have fallen from his eyes, he not only sees the yawning gap of decades between them, but _feels_ them too. Eggsy is on one side of that divide, and Victor is on his sister’s. Bloody hell.


	2. Chapter 2

After that, it’s a whirlwind of missions and countries.

Drug trafficking in Laos.

A rising criminal element in both Beijing and Seoul that takes a cross-Kingsman coordinated effort in both the London and Hong Kong branches to dismantle.

Delaying inevitable civil war in Rwanda.

Preventing another impending nuclear war between Pakistan and India.

A Québécois separatist plot to foil in, of all places, Calgary, involving, of all things, intentionally infected cattle.

By the time Eggsy’s feet touch English soil once more, he’s _shattered_ , body and mind, and he can barely keep his head up in the debrief with Arthur, much less focus.

Arthur, of course, notices. “Am I boring you, Galahad?”

There’s a noticeable delay before Eggsy can process the words and realise they require a response. “No, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t have a chance to sleep on the plane.”

“You’ve had a busier four weeks than most,” Arthur says, narrowing his eyes at Eggsy. “And yet all but one of your past missions were voluntary, which makes me think you’re intentionally avoiding something. Or someone.”

He’s far too exhausted and thin-skinned to feign ignorance. His emotions are simmering just beneath the surface as it is and they quickly break free at the slightest disturbance. “Do you think it could really be him?”

Arthur sighs, but it’s not one filled with exasperation or immediate dismissal. There are notes of nostalgia intertwined in that exhalation, and it’s enough for Eggsy to finally relax, tired of fighting his more sceptical colleagues and his own self-doubts. “I couldn’t honestly say. I’m not given to metaphysical leanings, but it’s as anyone who remembers Harry says, or at least is thinking, if not willing to admit: both Harry and that boy have been cheeky little shits.”

Despite the wistful atmosphere, Eggsy huffs out a laugh.

“When I joined Kingsman, Harry already had ten years on me, you know,” Arthur muses, “Spectacular agent. By far, the best of any of us at the time, and seemingly, enviously, without effort. But he tested one’s patience, from the then-Arthur to even his own friends, like he needed to know his limits. Like he needed to know what was the one thing that could push you away forever. To this day, I don’t know if it was because he wanted to be the one to carry out the pre-emptive strike at his choosing or to know where the line was so that he would never cross it.”

Eggsy remembers the first time Harry had riled him up. It had been shamefully easy to do, giving a verbal nudge to the chip on his shoulder, hitting him in his most vulnerable areas (poverty, his failed ambitions, his fears of dishonouring his father) with as much unerring accuracy as he had shown in launching an offence against Dean’s gang.

“As to whether or not your candidate is somehow, miraculously, a reincarnated or psychically transplanted or cosmically recycled version of Harry, or it’s all just one hell of a coincidence...whatever he is, Galahad, you’ve brought him into Kingsman. You have a duty to him either way,” Arthur tells him. “And it’s time you start doing it. No more running away.”

 

_____

 

Cat is on overnight duty when Eggsy strolls down into the handler’s domain. There’s a wiry level of caffeine-fuelled energy in the air, and while it’s generally not as active as it is during the day, Kingsman is more or less a 24/7 operation, and thus it remains busier than a typical graveyard shift.

“Evening, Galahad,” she greets without looking up from her screen. A quick glance at the monitor reveals several windows open to display building blueprints, probably in preparation for an agent’s upcoming mission.

“Hullo, lovely Cat. It’s more like early morning now.”

“Semantics. Either way, doesn’t it mean tired little boys should be in their beds?”

“I could use a little bedtime reading,” Eggsy tells her.

Cat holds up a small USB stick under his nose so fast, Eggsy can only blink and stare down at it cross-eyed. “Victor’s progress reports. Figure you’d come round and ask eventually.”

“Did I tell you how lovely you are lately?” Eggsy asks, plucking the stick from her fingers and applying it to the nearest open terminal.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, but more tangible gratitude will keep you there. I’ve emailed you my Christmas wishlist.”

“And the relevant shop of where to buy each item, yes thank you for that. Accommodating as always,” Eggsy says.

The drive contains all of Merlin’s written assessments (grudging praise in equal mixture with inconsequential complaints), the rather impressive grades, and, much to Eggsy’s delight, video footage of Victor at the outdoor range, running through the obstacle course, and undergoing the sniper exercises.

By all rights, Victor’s gaggle of gangly limbs ought to have been a literal walking disaster. Somehow, though, he’s obtained absolute spacial awareness of and a precise degree of control over his body that he becomes simply a seamless flow of graceful movement, from one position into the next, be it scaling a twenty-five foot wall, scrabbling about in the dirt with a large pack strapped to his back (with one such pocket reserved for housing Marmite, he sees), or reloading and wielding a rifle so smoothly, it could have been a natural extension of his own being.

Eggsy finds himself entranced.

Cat wheels her chair next to him. “He’s doing superbly. Must be all those ballroom lessons, right? He’d be neck and neck with Angeline if it weren’t for all the demerits he’s been racking up.”

This pulls Eggsy out of his spell. “What? What demerits?”

“Mostly mouthing off to his instructors. And constantly going AWOL from the dormitory at night. He doesn’t leave the property, but we’ve no idea where he goes. He’s fucking with the cameras. Driving Merlin batty, he is.”

“I see.” Especially why everyone’s been giving him the evils since he got back and why Arthur’s essentially told him to get his house in order. Eggsy pushes away from the terminal and stands up. “I’ll speak with him.”

“One of my items, you can find it at Lush. I suggest you start there first!” Cat calls after him.

 

_____

 

When he gets to his office, he finds Victor stretched out on the leather couch with a book and one of the apples from the fruitbowl the housekeeper insists on keeping in each agent’s rooms, Marmite curled up into a ball on his chest. He idly peers at Eggsy before coolly returning back to his reading.

Eggsy just stares at him from the doorway. “I’m not even going to ask how you broke in.”

“Your passcode is 121997. That’s hardly breaking in. That’s you needing something less obvious than the American-formatted date of your father’s death.”

“How did you….” It takes a long time for him to swallow his shock, heart beating faster. “How did you know that?”

Victor finally gives him a look that could be construed as abashed. “Public records and a bit of trial and error.” Then he sets his jaw into a hard, defencive line. “It’s the only way I could find out anything about you ever since you dumped me here like an unwed teenage mother.”

Whatever it is he thought...but no. Eggsy gives him a stern glare as he slams the door and moves to his desk. “Is that...is your rat wearing a jumper?”

“He’s not a rat. And he needs the added warmth.”

“Right.” Eggsy slumps into his chair and rubs his hands down his face, trying to rouse himself into more bushy-eyed alertness, especially when dealing with this one. “Right. Look, I’ve got to apologise. I’ve been unexpectedly busy. I didn’t mean to make it seem like I had...abandoned you.”

“It’s fine,” Victor brushes off, shaking open his book once more. “I’d hardly noticed anyway.” 

Eggsy gives him an incredulous look. “You’ve been breaking into my office every night.”

“It’s not like you were here to care. Besides, I like this couch. It’s the perfect length for me.”

Because it used to be Harry’s. Eggsy swallows and his eyes alight on his bar. It’s not even a conscious thought, going to it and fetching a glass. Once fortified, he completes the trip across the room, parking one arse cheek on the sliver of space not being taken up by Victor’s body. It jostles both Victor and the book from his hand, forcing Marmite to retreat down to the cradle of his legs, and in the newly provided space on Victor’s chest, Eggsy rests the hand holding his drink. “I’ve reviewed your progress thus far. You’re doing better than I could have ever hoped. I’m proud of you.”

This seems to throw Victor for a loop between being used as a makeshift table and being on the receiving end of praise when he’d all but expected reprimand, and the confusion that twists his features only just masks a glimmer of, oh, but what is that? Fear? So Eggsy repeats it again, more insistently. “I’m proud of you.”

After not knowing what else to do, finally Victor just says, “Thanks,” before averting his eyes.

“How has it been? How do you like it so far?” Eggsy prompts, because doing well with something and liking it are two different things.

It pulls Victor’s gaze to him again. “It’s fine,” he neutrally begins, but then visibly checks himself. “It’s more than fine. I mean, it’s not easy, but it’s...it’s like I was born to do it.” Realising how arrogant that sounds, he tries again. “I’ve never really felt like I’ve belonged anywhere more than I do here.”

“Good,” Eggsy says. “Because from the looks of things now, you have a very good chance of getting it.”

“If I can beat Angeline,” Victor grumbles. “She’s….”

“Remarkable. But so are you. Don’t focus on her, just work on doing and being your best,” Eggsy says. “You really ought to go back down and get some sleep.”

“I can’t sleep down there,” Victor admits.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like…. Do you ever…” But Victor stops himself, shaking his head.

“No, go on. What is it?”

“I’m having the strangest sense that…. I’ve never been here before. I know I haven’t. Yet I can’t help feeling a sense of familiarity.”

Eggsy doesn’t dare breathe. “Like what?”

“I don’t seem to ever get lost. And the library. It’s like...I knew where every book was. All my favourites. Even the exams. They just seem...unsurprising,” Victor says.

 _You have been here before!_ Eggsy wants to shout at him. Shake him. But what an unfair burden it would be to lay on Victor’s shoulders, he realises, whether it was true or not. Instead, he drains half his glass and stands up, immediately missing the co-mingled warmth of Victor’s body.

“I’ll let you have one more night here,” Eggsy tells him. “But then you’ve got to go back. No more running off. A Kingsman agent…” He tries to find a suitably wise saying, but fuck it, he’s never been as eloquent or well-read as Harry. “...gets the fuck on with it.”

Victor catches him off-guard with his smile. A real one, not the cautious smirks or faint humouring wisps he usually dealt out. It’s wide and toothy and transforms his whole face into something open, joyous. God, Eggsy’s never seen that unrestrained sort of smile on Harry before. Probably because it was the most devastating weapon in his arsenal.

 

_____

 

He knows something is different as soon as the taxi pulls up in front of the mews: two guards standing just at the entrance, both tall, blond, and in possession of jaws larger than bread boxes and cheekbones that could slice through cheese.

“Good evening, Lucas, Valter,” Eggsy says as he hops out of the taxi and passes them. “Or, good morning rather.”

“Sir,” Valter nods to him. Eggsy would swear there’s a gleam in his eye, but when he looks again, Valter’s returned to staring straight ahead, his face an impenetrable mask.

Eggsy sighs and walks down the lane to his home where two more guards wait. They could be clones of the first two. “Nils, Theo. Hello.”

“Sir,” they both say in unison. It’s a little disconcerting.

The front door is helpfully unlocked already. Eggsy takes a deep breath to steady himself before walking in. “I thought you’d be at that EU Summit.”

“I was,” Her Majesty Tilde V, Queen of Sweden, says from the centre of his living room, wearing nothing but his dressing gown. She’s in her mid-fifties now, and the two decades since their first initial meeting have involved, on her side, having married, produced an heir and three to spare, and subsequently widowed. She’s still absolutely stunning with a body any woman half her age would envy.

Also: still kinky as fuck. They’ve been at this, off and on, depending on the various relationships Eggsy’s been in and out of, ever since. Her husband had been very grateful.

Eggsy’s brows shoot up at the display of toys on the coffee table. “You’ve been busy.”

“Still am,” Tilde says. “So let’s not waste any more time. I’ve got to be back in Stockholm for breakfast. Chop, chop!”

“Er. Are you letting me pick the tools this time?”

“Thought I’d surprise you.” She grins. It means nothing good.

“Right,” Eggsy says, pulling at his tie. “I’m going upstairs to change.”

His whole body feels exorbitantly heavy as he makes it up each step and he’d like nothing more than to simply flop down onto his bed and sleep for the next week. He’s so tired, he simply drops the pieces of his suit onto the floor. He’s down to his shirt sleeves, boxers and socks and is considering fixing himself a nightcap (morningcap?) when his mobile goes off. A glance at the screen reveals the ID as _She Who Shall Not Be Named_. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He’s conditioned to take those calls no matter what, not the least because his ex-wife would only ever call him if it involved Yumi. “Well, it’s nice to see you respecting my sleep schedule as always, darling.”

An inelegant snort can be heard from the other end. “Please. I’m assuming you’ve just come back from one of your oh-so-important work trips to fix the seat of some fat banker’s split trousers.” So. Nothing dire then. Now Eggsy is freed up to be annoyed.

“Well, since you know me so well,” She does. “Then I’d hope you'd know how much I want you to get to the point. Why are you calling?”

“Roxy sent an email informing me that you will be imminently asking for my permission to have my daughter spend Christmas and New Year’s with you, so I’ve been patiently waiting for your balls to descend, but that’s looking less and less likely. We may have to go in with the forceps.”

“I’m surprised you think I still have any since I could have sworn you got them in the divorce.” Damn Rox and her freight train tactics. Eggsy sits on the edge of his bed and massages his temple.

“You know she has a life here I’m not willing to disrupt, Eggsy,” Asami says, like he’s particularly stupid and would have forgotten. “In fact, her school’s scheduled a ski trip to the Alps during that time. It’ll be a good bonding with her peers.”

“She’s _twelve_. It’s not like she’ll be hitting the black diamond slopes any time soon. Besides, she’s spent more of her life in England than Tokyo. All her friends miss her. Her grandmum misses her.”

It’s then that Tilde appears in the door carrying the largest dildo Eggsy’s ever seen. It’s shockingly purple and the length of Eggsy’s forearm. He’s not sure he’d be able to fit his fingers around its circumference. “Are we ready to begin?”

Eggsy’s mouth falls open.

“A child needs stability, something you never bothered to think about,” Asami carries on. “She’s only just settled down here.”

 _Fuck no!_ he tries to mouth to Tilde before saying aloud, “Well maybe you should have thought of that before you up and ripped her from everything she’s ever known and moved her halfway around the world in the first place!”

“Oh yes, and what did she have before? An unreliable, absentee father who prioritised two fingers of scotch over her—”

“I also brought my favourite harness,” Tilde says as she slinks towards Eggsy, holding it up to show him. It’s a deep red leather with brass grommets. Fucking hell. “Now, do you want to be on your back or on all fours?”

“Is somebody there with you right now?” Asami demands.

“No,” Eggsy immediately denies as Tilde starts tugging on the elastic waistband of his boxers with her long pink nails, pushing him down onto the bed so she can slip them over his hips. He covers up the mouthpiece on his phone to hiss at her, “That cricket bat is going nowhere near my—”

“—er going over there, hopes up, only to learn her father has to fob her off on his best mate because ‘something came up at work’ and that he’s ‘really, truly sorry’ to have missed Christmas or birthdays or school plays, awards, recitals—”

Without warning, Tilde delves a hand between his legs and slides two lubricated fingers into his hole, causing Eggsy to yelp.

“What the fuck was that?” Asami asks.

“Nothing. I stubbed my toe,” Eggsy grunts, wiggling his hips to dislodge said fingers from his arse and turning over to scramble across to the other side of the bed. “Look, she’s my daughter too. I am allowed visits! I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for and then some without demanding anything in return. I’d like to have this one, just this once.”

“I’m getting re-married, Eggsy.”

Eggsy freezes in his tracks, blindsided. “You...what? When?”

“His name is Derek. He’s an American who runs his company’s Tokyo office. We’ve been seeing each other for the last two years and three weeks ago, he proposed. Yumi adores him and he treats her as his own.”

“You’ve never said anything about him before,” Eggsy accuses.

“It’s hardly any of your business who I date.”

“It is when they’re being exposed to _my_ daughter— _ahhhhhh!”_ he breaks off on account of the broad blunt head of a dildo being pushed past the tight ring of muscle in his arsehole, stretching him wide.

“Jesus, are you alright?” Asami asks with a hint of actual concern in her voice.

Eggsy shuts his eyes and grits his teeth. “Uh...yeah,” he says shakily. “Think my toe may be broken, actually.”

“Maybe you should go to hospital.”

“It’ll be fine,” Eggsy tries to dismiss, mouth falling open as Tilde presses forward, pushing the dildo in a few more inches. He glances over his shoulder to see her kneeling behind him like some imperious Amazon, voluptuous tits still perky, harness secured around her slim hips, contrasting with her pale, smooth skin. Her purple cock a third of the way inside him. She winks at him. “Shit.”

“We volunteered as chaperones for the ski trip. This would be the first Christmas we’d be spending together as a new family.”

“You’re really determined to erase me out of her life entirely, aren’t you?”

“It’s not like there’d be that much to get rid of,” Asami snaps before there’s a long pause. Eggsy can practically see the deep, patient breath she takes before saying in much more measured tones, “That’s not what I’m trying to do, Eggsy. I think it’s... _nice_ that you want to spend time with your daughter. For once. Perhaps we can find some time after the school year ends. She’ll have a week in March. Let’s plan for then.”

“Fine,” Eggsy relents. It’s better than nothing. He tentatively shifts his hips and tries to push back, fucking himself a little more on Tilde’s cock. It’s only in a little over halfway and he’s already feeling too stuffed. “March it is. And something better not come up at the last second. None of this Derek suddenly wanting to go on holiday to New Zealand or some such.”

“Isn’t that more your line?” Asami sneers, getting in the last word before she hangs up.

Eggsy angrily tosses his phone, hearing it clatter somewhere on the floor. Probably cracked the screen again and Merlin will tear him a new one. Well, in addition to the one Tilde seems to be determined to make tonight.

“Look at you, now you’re all tense,” Tilde chides, rubbing at his flanks like he’s a horse.

“I’d like to see you with someone’s entire arm up your arse,” he grunts.

“I’ve given birth to four children, all natural. Try a watermelon,” she says, which, alright, _fair_.

She emphasises her point by pulling back a little and then shoving back in, forcing the air from Eggsy’s lungs like a punch to the gut.

She gentles her rhythm after that, little shifts back and forth with her hips. Eventually his arse stops spasming around her cock and he can feel himself relaxing into it, even enjoying the smooth, wet glide, the slowly unravelling sense of pleasure from each brush over his prostate. “There we go,” she coos, increasing the pace and length of her thrusts, pulling almost all the way out before shoving back in, growing breathless. Must be one of those dildos with a textured bulb that’s pressing against her clit. “See? You can take anything you put your mind to.”

The fake scrotum is battering at his ass now. The relative quiet in the air makes the slide of wet flesh, the creaking of the mattress (thank God his headboard is nailed to the wall), his grunts, and her breathy moans all the more obscene sounding. The whole thing, with its girth like a soda can, is now being shoved inside him. He feels like he’s being fucked by a police truncheon and all he can do is dig his elbows in, bear down, and take it.

It used to be easier to come untouched when he was a jumped-up twenty-year-old, but now he’s got to give himself a helping hand, balancing on one arm to reach down and wrap his fingers around himself, pushing back onto her cock on each downstroke, timing it with every thrust in. Sometimes he throws in a little fantasy just to sweeten it, like imagining it’s that handsome as fuck oil tycoon he once had to seduce or, more often than not, though he won’t admit it to anyone, he’s imagined Harry giving it to him hard and fast, _for-fucking-ever._ The nice part about this is that it’s always a good, long, hard fuck, unfolding at the length and speed at which Tilde needs to build and take her own pleasure.

When her hips stutter asynchronously and she gasps and makes a noise that sounds almost pained, Eggsy furiously gives himself the final strokes to bring himself off along with her, spurting come all over the duvet cover, groaning.

He’s brought around to awareness by the distinctly unpleasant sensation of Tilde pulling out, leaving him feeling like he’s gaping open. His legs finally give out and he collapses onto the bed, right in the wet spot, uncaring. His hips and knees already ache from the static position he’s had them in for so long.

Tilde, who apparently wasn’t joking about being on a tight schedule, is already moving about his bedroom, carefully washing the dildo in the ensuite, putting on her clothes, touching up her makeup, and pinning her hair up in some sleek, complicated pastry-like style he can’t even begin to figure out. When she steps out, she looks like she’s ready to do a royal photoshoot.

All Eggsy manages to do is roll onto his back, hissing at the way his arse twinges. He’s going to be so fucking sore tomorrow.

“That was lovely. I really needed that,” Tilde tells him, leaning down to give him a kiss on the forehead. “And I’ve got a flight to catch.”

“Happy to be of service,” he says drowsily, doing a lazy salute at her. To think all those years ago, her proposition of anal in return for saving the world would lead them to here and now.

He should have known after the first round when she turned to him and brightly said, _Now do you!_

“Just clean up the rest of your toys downstairs before you go. Hate to scare the housekeeper. Already thinks I’m a serial killer.”

“I think I’ll leave this here as something to remember me by,” Tilde says, setting the monstrous dildo on his dresser, which may go on to be featured in his future nightmares. “Until next time, darling.”

When she leaves, Eggsy looks down at himself. All traces of his youth have long since been absent. Older now. Broader. A lot more scars. No middle aged spread yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to stave off with hours at the gym and being just a little more careful with what he eats. He should probably lay off the booze a bit more, but he can only sacrifice so much.

His dress shirt is tangled up in his arms, damp with sweat, still mostly on, now hopelessly wrinkled. He’s still wearing his socks. Not for the first time does he ask himself, how is this his life?

 

_____

 

At breakfast, Roxy is kind enough not to say anything when Eggsy enters the dining room a little more...gingerly than usual. Nor does she speak when he pulls out a chair and painstakingly lowers himself into it, clamping down on the yelp that almost escapes through his tightly clenched teeth once his bottom takes his full weight.

“So,” Eggsy says once he feels like he can speak in his normal register. “I might have promised Victor we could spar today, but I don’t think I’m, er, up for it at the moment. Could you ask him to meet me in the library this afternoon instead? Maybe wear him out a bit beforehand so he’ll be less of a shit than usual?”

“Of course, Eggsy.” Roxy keeps her focus on cutting up her sausage into neat little bite sized pieces with nary a scrape of her plate. “Speaking of wearing out….” A little smirk plays at the corner of her mouth. Oh bugger. He knew his grace period would not last for long. “Tilde pay you another visit, did she?”

Eggsy stretches out his hand to get to the toast rack and grimaces when his weight shifts, snatching two pieces of toast with more force than necessary. “I’m not dignifying that with an answer.”

“Oh yes, because at this point we’re still pretending you’ve got any to spare.” Roxy pops a piece of sausage into her mouth as she smiles smugly at him.

Eggsy points his butter knife at her. “I’m still mad at you, you know.”

“Me?” Roxy has the gall to look shocked and offended. “What did I do?”

“Fraternising with the enemy.”

Roxy blinks, realises to whom he’s referring, and subsequently rolls her eyes. “We’re actually still very good friends, you know.”

“Which isn’t very sporting of you is it? You were _my_ best mate first!” Eggsy accuses before stuffing his mouth with half a slice of toast, feeling very sore about the whole thing (in more ways than one today).

“I’m allowed to be friends with whoever I please. Do you know how difficult it is to be surrounded almost entirely by men in every damn area of my life?” Roxy asks, and Eggsy has to avert his eyes, chagrined, because Roxy isn’t wrong. Whatever difficulties he may have had, she’s had it thrice as worse, from dealing with her still almost entirely male Kingsman agents to her divorce and interactions with her own children being reduced to weekend visits when she wasn’t stopping a coup in Mozambique. “It’s nice to have a woman to talk to sometimes.”

“Yeah, I bet you two discuss all sorts of things, like where Yumi gets to spend Christmas, despite me specifically telling you I’d handle it.” On the other hand, she _did_ go behind his back. He bites into his buttered toast angrily.

Roxy remains unapologetic. “Well, I knew you weren’t going to say anything! You’d keep procrastinating asking until it was far too late to make any plans and then you’d simply shrug and give it up for a bad job, patting yourself on the back and telling yourself that at least you tried.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to parent! And I also don’t get chummy with John and hash out all _your_ failings as a mother.”

As soon as he’s said it, though, he knows he’s taken it too far.

The room feels like it’s dropped its temperature by several degrees as Roxy grips her cutlery so tightly Eggsy thinks she’d impale him with them if she didn’t have so much restraint.

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy immediately apologises. “That didn’t come out right at all.”

“No, it didn’t,” Roxy agrees icily.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, dropping his toast back onto his plate. No appetite now. “I’m just...frustrated with the whole situation. With several situations. And I’m taking it out on you.”

For a moment, Eggsy worries Roxy isn’t going to accept it, but he all but sighs in relief when Roxy’s shoulders relax. She returns to spearing her breakfast and it’s quiet for a full thirty seconds before she asks, “Did Asami agree to it, at least?”

Eggsy blows out a breath, shaking his head. “Maybe March, she said.”

“I’m sorry, Eggsy,” Roxy tells him softly. “I really am. You’re right. I shouldn’t interfere in other people’s families when I’ve hardly got my own under control.”

Eggsy frowns. “I thought you and John were on better terms now? You got to see girls recently and everything.”

“I had to damn well grovel for even that much,” Roxy admits, setting her silverware down and folding her arms across her chest and staring at the polished wood surface of the table. “But it’s not even him, Eggsy, it’s...it’s the girls. They said they didn’t like to come down to London. They would rather spend time with their friends over their own mother.”

“Oh Rox,” Eggsy says, because he doesn’t know what he can say or do that would help.

“Tweens, right?” Roxy says dryly, even though her eyes are too bright and she conspicuously sniffs.

“They’re definitely the worst,” Eggsy miserably agrees. “No, that’s a lie. The worst is probably yet to come. _Teenagers_.”

“Oh God, I think you’re right,” Roxy says with dread.

“Did I tell you most of my arrests came from my teenage years?” Eggsy muses, which unsurprisingly doesn’t do much to assuage Roxy’s fears.

“I used to steal from my father’s wine cellar and run off to the woods with his best vintages in the company of our neighbour’s son every night for a month during summer break. We’re talking six-figure priced wine, gulped down like swill by unappreciative and tasteless teenagers. My father thought it was the housekeeper and sacked her. I didn’t even say anything. I was awful.”

“But as turbulent a time as teenagehood is,” Eggsy tries to say optimistically, “We came out alright, didn’t we?”

Roxy gives him a flat look. “Eggsy, we’re two divorced middle-aged spies who have estranged relationships with our children and whose ideas of a good time are shagging the boss on the dining room table or getting fucked up the arse by a Swedish monarch whenever she blows into town.”

In the wake of _that_ revelation, Eggsy stares at said table in consternation. “I eat on this table, you know.”

A beat of silence follows before they both burst into hysterical laughter.

“Arthur? _Really_?” Eggsy manages to ask once he’s gathered enough air.

“What? He was my mentor. We’re close. Always have been.” Roxy shrugs. “There was always that _thing_ , you know. Between us. Maybe it started off more paternal, at least until I got fed up with that and climbed up into his lap.”

It’s not exactly an image he needs, but fair dues, because he’s been gifting Roxy (and far too many others) with all sorts of unwanted visuals of his exploits, often by accidentally leaving his glasses on while doing them. “Between that and all your little minions you’ve stacked the table with, I’m calling it right now: nepotism.”

“Oh come off it,” Roxy scoffs. “Besides, I’ll...grudgingly admit you may be breaking my streak yet with this round. You with your young protege-come-reincarnated lost love.”

Eggsy glowers at her. “Joke all you want, but he’s cleaning up. Won’t you even consider the possibility that it’s because he’s done it all before?”

Roxy sighs. “And what would it mean, then, if it were true? How much would you want him to remember, Eggsy? You? His death? All his previous life’s failures? Do you want him to stop being Victor and start becoming your Harry again? A Harry, I might add, who’s been left longer to your imagination than what you knew of him in real life?”

They were all good points that brought the light a little too uncomfortably close to his own motivations and desires maybe. Truth be told: yes, yes he wanted Harry back more than he wanted Victor. Wanted Victor to get over this whole ridiculous business and simply _remember_ so that Harry could come back. Eggsy wanted things to be like before. No, he wanted things to be like he imagined them to be, dreamed them to be. He no longer knows fact from fiction, and more importantly, doesn’t want to know, because he’s got a sneaking suspicion the cold truth would hurt a great deal more.

And if he were entirely wrong? If Victor is, in fact, just Victor and would never be anything more? Aside from the whole re-broken heart bit, Eggsy would have unfairly placed too many assumptions and expectations on this boy, knowing Victor could never be able to live up to them. Eggsy would ruin him.

“You think I should stop,” Eggsy says quietly.

“I just think that whoever Victor is, you need to step back and let him be it,” Roxy says. “And if that’s not who you want him to be, then at least your heart will be better guarded against it.”

“Okay,” Eggsy agrees, because as always, she’s right. “Okay.”

 

_____

 

“Why don’t you tell me a little more of your life,” Eggsy suggests while shifting in his chair in the library for the fifth or so time, wincing a little. He had been _this close_ to adding a pillow to his seat.

Positioned in his habitual lazy recline on the couch nearby with Marmite curled up in a shivering ball on his stomach, Victor frowns at him. “Are you injured? Is that why we’re not sparring?”

“We’re not talking about me today,” Eggsy snaps perhaps a bit more sharply than he had intended. “I mean, I want to know more about you. How you grew up. Your family. Friends? School? You were one of the ‘Victory Babies,’ weren’t you? Merlin and I saw the clip.”

The mention is enough to set Victor to scowling. “Please don’t remind me. I was still a toddler when they made that stupid film. I didn’t have much of a say, yet a lifetime of taunting.”

“It’s clear that your parents were very happy to have you. That they loved you very much.”

“They did. They _do_ ,” Victor says, fidgeting with the rim of the book he had propped up on his chest. “In spite of how often I try their patience.”

“Yes, I’ve seen your records,” Eggsy dryly reminds him.

Victor shrugs. “They always forgave me. I was their little miracle, you see. Never got mad at me, even when I really wanted them to. Even when I tried my hardest to disappoint them. It was like I could do no wrong. Drove me mad, that.” 

“Why?” Eggsy asks, confused. “Why did you do that to your own parents? They sound like parents every other kid would kill to have.”

“Because they’re not my parents!” Victor shouts, startling them both. Marmite as well, given that the dog raises its head to glare at Victor, ears perked. Victor’s eyes are wide, like he can’t believe what he’s just said. He shakes his head. “No, that’s not right. I meant...bugger it, I don’t know what I meant. I meant...they loved me so much and yet I could never seem to love them as much in return. It never felt right. They just seemed like...two people I had to live with. I could never bring myself to allow them in to be close. Everything they said or did was suspicious to me.”

Eggsy promised both Roxy and himself he wouldn’t look into things, see ghosts that weren’t there. He _promised_.

“And the worst part,” Victor continues, unable to even meet Eggsy’s gaze. “Is that they know it too. I know it hurts them, but I can’t. I can’t seem to change it. I guess I’m just...broken.”

“That’s not….” Eggsy starts to say, but realises he’s not sure what he say that wouldn’t sound so lacking. “You’re not broken. It sounds like you still very much care for them, in spite of what you may or may not think you feel. There’s no actual prescribed way to have a relationship, you know.”

Finally Victor looks up at him. “So that was probably more than you wanted to know about my family life.”

“Shall I find a safer topic?” Eggsy proposes, but is just as relieved. He’s supposed to be getting to know Victor for who he is, not feeding into his already outsized delusions. “Alright. Why the Army? Pardon the assumption, but discipline doesn’t exactly seem to mesh well with your personality.”

Victor remains quiet for a long time, considering. “You were right, before. I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. Army sounded like a good way to do that at the time,” Victor says. “For awhile, I even felt that way. At least until I started seeing the hypocrisy and rampant abuse of power. How no one would dare question or disobey a bad order because it simply wasn’t done. It...infuriated me.”

“Your quick temper keeps getting you into trouble,” Eggsy reminds him. “You’ll have to work on that. It may not just be just your life on the line, but others as well.”

“I’ve been on my best behaviour today.” Victor regards him with scepticism. “And you can honestly say that you’ve overcome your own temper?”

“I’ve had a long time to work on it. When I was younger...not so much. I did many a stupid thing when I was angry. Nicked a car and crashed into a police cruiser once.”

“I read,” Victor says. Ah right. Public records. “But what I don’t understand is how all the charges were dropped afterwards.”

A man in a bespoke suit, sunglasses, and an umbrella leaning against the wall on the stairs. A ridiculous medal he still had hidden away in a drawer in his desk. “How else do you think I was brought into Kingsman?”

Victor considers that. “So...what, you now go about picking up delinquents and bringing them into Kingsman as some sort of pay it forward scheme?”

“Something like that,” Eggsy says with a fond smile. “I like to find people who want to better themselves and give them the opportunity to do so. After all, true nobility is—”

“—being superior to one’s former self,” Victor finishes.

Eggsy swallows the lump in his throat and looks away. “Yes. Know that one too, I see.”

“You always seem to get upset when I do that.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes when I say something or do something. You get a far away look in your eye,” Victor notes with a little too much accuracy.

He’ll have to be better about that, let the past remain the past and all. Still, he’s got to give Victor something. “Remember when I told you that you reminded me of someone? It’s that.”

“Who was he?” Victor asks.

The man who believed in him. The man who angered him. The man who he had loved and disappointed and avenged. The man he had tried to live for, with uneven success. What would Harry say if he could see Eggsy now?

“The man who gave me my chance.” For good or for ill.

 

_____

 

Eventually, even Eggsy can’t be put out to pasture for long. The world is too large and there are too many people wanting a piece of it. He gets sent to Spain first, then Belarus, then right back over to England in Basingstoke, exploring an old, abandoned industrial park for rumoured nefarious activity for a larger purpose that still remained unclear by persons who still remained unknown. But that is sometimes how these larger, more complex missions begin: lots of legwork, lots of people and places to be discounted.

“Nothing here,” Eggsy says, moving his torch slowly over the rows of dilapidated cubicles one more time. “No heat signatures. No radio waves or frequencies or signals. No evidence left behind. No signs of activity, not for months.”

“Copy that,” Cat says over the line. “We’ll make a note of it and comb over the intel again for other clues. It was just one possibility after all, and at least now we get to cross it off the list.”

“I’m ecstatic to learn of where I’ll be sent off to next. A pig farm? Count me right in.”

“Hmmm, sounds to me as if you’d be right at home there,” Cat teases, ignoring Eggsy’s indignant squawk, “Alright, Galahad, come on home now.”

“Right. Will do, Cat,” Eggsy says, pulling off his glasses, turning them around and holding them out so she can look upon his glorious countenance in full as he holds the torch up to his face so that his features are ghastly underlit. “Shall I tell you a spooky story? It involves a sad, middle-aged man who used to work in a depressing industrial park in the cesspool of England, also known as Basingjoke.”

“Very funny, but no, no I don’t.”

“Shame. It’s a good one.”

Or at least that’s what Eggsy would have replied with had not the world around him chosen to, at that precise moment, explode.


	3. Chapter 3

When Eggsy slowly returns to the world of consciousness, he knows he’s in Kingsman’s medical ward, which, while being more luxurious than many five star hotels, is still a dreadful place in which to wake. He’s wound up here enough times to know its precise scent (some sort of lightly infused spearmint), its tasteful silence (no obnoxious beeping of various machinery), and the sumptuous comfort of its beds (okay, those were nice). He used to joke that it was for the latter that he kept winding up here so often, but this time he reckons it isn’t as funny. The fact that he knows he should be in a lot of pain but feels a bit too floaty to care means he’s on some amazing drugs.

The lights have been considerately dimmed so that his retinas are not immediately seared away when he exposes his eyes to them. And, well, it has to be the drugs, because for the life of him, he can’t understand why Marmite is curled up next to his head and repeatedly licking his ear. Moreover, he can’t figure out how to get the creature to stop. It _tickles_.

“Rrrrrooooooaaaf,” is what he tells the little rat, though it somehow gets garbled from what it had originally started out as in his brain.

“Oh good, you’re finally awake,” Merlin says, which makes Eggsy blink and cranes his head a scant two millimetres in the other direction, finding the owner of said voice standing by his bedside. “Dealing with one round of recruits is about all I can handle these days. I’d hate to have to take on yet another.”

Eggsy only hears about half of this because that goddamn dog is still—he turns his head back to Marmite. “Whatthefuck, you lil’—” only to get a his nose slobbered on instead. Disgusting. “Merlin, help.”

Merlin conveniently ignores him. “If you want to know what happened—”

“I got exploded,” Eggsy informs him, and gets a french kiss from Marmite for daring to open his mouth at the wrong moment. “Ahhhhhhhh! Help. Get this—”

“We missed it,” Merlin admits. There’s a tightness to his mouth that means he’s significantly unhappy about it. “The explosives had been located in a discontinued heating vent that hadn’t been on the most recent blueprints. It seems our little office building had been partly renovated in the late 2020s. Going over the remains, it appears the explosion was just a test run for something larger.”

“And lucky me just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least now we know our friends’ plans are more advanced than we thought.”

“Except we don’t know who they are and what their real target will be,” Merlin says grimly. “And you were lucky. A cubicle literally fell on top of you and protected you from the worst of the blast, else there wouldn’t have been much of you left to collect. On the other hand, a cubicle fell on top of you. You took a hard hit to the head and collected a few second-degree burns, a fractured elbow and bruised ribs.”

Eggsy tries to peer down at his bound up arm, almost entirely encased in a thick cast. His dominant hand too. “Damn.”

“Which puts you out of the field for at least the next two months plus or minus PT,” Merlin finishes. “I’m switching you and Roxy out on this one. Congratulations, you’re to be my new assistant in recruit training.”

Eggsy squints up at him balefully.

“As for that,” Merlin nods at Marmite, still going at Eggsy's ear like there's a hunk of meat in it, “Your candidate has been a fixture round these parts when he hasn’t been in training.”

When Merlin looks past him, Eggsy painstakingly turns his head even further to catch a glimpse of Victor having somehow compressed all his limbs into one of the corner chairs, face tucked into the crook of his arm in a manner not unlike his rat dog, fast asleep.

Eggsy doesn’t know what to make of it, but there’s balloon of warmth expanding in his chest. Then again, that could possibly be the drugs talking. Still, it’s always nice having people there for you when you woke up. The nature of being a Kingsman hasn’t really afforded him many of those experiences.

“Reminds me of someone else once,” Merlin says in _that_ tone, because he likes to ruin everything.

 

_____

 

Eggsy feels like he sleeps forever, but he can’t seem to help it. The drugs carry him in and out of consciousness at whim. He loses sense of the days and nights. Time is only bound together by one long wire of dull ache and exhaustion.

Someone finally decides to start cutting back on the meds, because gradually Eggsy’s begins to rouse for longer, more clearheaded periods at a time. He becomes aware that his back hurts from lying down so long and that his mouth is always dry.

“Here,” a voice filled with warmth says, but more importantly, a straw is placed between his lips, and sucking on it means an influx of wonderfully cool water. “Slowly.”

When Eggsy’s had enough, he relinquishes the straw and is carefully laid back down against the pillows. “You should be in training,” he slurs tiredly. “Not looking after an old, injured man."

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Victor tells him.

“Stop letting your rat sleep on the bed,” Eggsy says before dipping back into slumber once more.

 

_____

 

But for all that it’s nice to have someone to care about him enough to stick it out by his largely uneventful side, it starts to get a bit smothering when Victor assumes his injuries mean he’s a complete invalid and possibly an idiot too.

“Here, why don’t you let me….”

“It’s fine,” Eggsy says shortly. “I can walk, there’s nothing wrong with my legs—”

Too late. Victor has plastered himself against Eggsy’s side to help him up even as Eggsy’s braced himself for the pain of standing, and the collision jars his tender ribs, causing him to grunt and close his eyes to keep from swearing out loud.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” Victor says, backing off in haste, but his concern bounds him back again, until he’s more or less hovering too close.

Eggsy can practically feel him fidgeting. “It’s _fine_. Or would be, if you gave me some damn _space_!”

A wounded look flashes across Victor’s face before he manages to smooth it away and retreat, causing Eggsy to feel a terrible stab of guilt. “I’m sorry,” he apologises. “Look, I get that you’re keen on helping, but I don’t handle being injured well, as you may have noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” Victor says, attempting an unaffected demeanour, but his eyes, Harry’s eyes, always betray too much.

Eggsy was never very good at mending fences beyond the initial regret and apologies, so he just shuffles on his way to the toilet to take care of basic needs, then emerges to wash his hands and give his face a good long hard look in the very well-lit mirror to assess the minor cuts and bruises he’s sustained.

But what he ends up noticing aren’t his injuries at all. By God, he’s getting old, isn’t he? There are damnable lines across his forehead, crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, deep laugh lines around his mouth. The dark circles that had so often plagued the space beneath his eyes from exhaustion never really went away. He’s lucky his hair runs on the fairer side and hasn’t receded very much, though it’s darker at the roots, and Eggsy can see plenty of grey starting to lighten them. Eggsy remembers liking all of these things on Harry’s face. He had thought them distinguished. Less so on himself.

His focus shifts from his own regrettably aged features to Victor’s in the mirror. The boy is still backed up into his corner, eyeing him with a mixture of wariness and resentment. He wonders if Harry liked to carry grudges. Probably, at least until he felt the offending party had received their comeuppance.

“It appears I could do with a shave,” Eggsy says, running his uninjured hand across his jaw and down his throat, wincing at the prickly bristles that scrape across his palm.

“Merlin had your toiletries brought down,” Victor says. “I saw the shaving kit.”

“It’s a straight razor.” Eggsy smiles ruefully, before gently touching his sling. “Makes for a nice close shave in the right hands, quite literally, in my case, and I don’t fancy learning ambidexterity today. Do you think you could ask around for an electric one?”

Victor’s gaze focuses on the shaving kit lying innocuously on the ledge. “I could...I could help you.”

Eggsy studies him. “Do you even need to shave?” That baby smooth skin on Victor’s face doesn’t look like it could sprout a hair to save its life.

Predictably, Victor scowls at him. “Of course I shave.”

“With a straight razor?”

“How hard can it be?” Which is followed by a shrug. “I’m good with knives.”

That isn’t reassuring. Despite Eggsy’s clear scepticism, Victor approaches him and picks up the shaving kit, undoing its ties and spreading it out across the ledge. He picks up the razor curiously and unfolds it, admiring its elegant design from lithe blade to polished handle. Eggsy can’t help but imagine Harry doing just this very thing, testing the sharpness with his thumb, wielding it with as much grace as he did any deadly object.

“Who’s HH?” Victor asks, pulling Eggsy from his musings.

“What?”

Victor turns the handle around so that Eggsy can see the initials that had been burned into the wood. Was everything conspiring against him lately? “An old friend.”

“Is this perhaps the same old friend you keep wistfully going on about? This man who gave you a chance?” Victor asks, arching a brow. “Else you seem to have a curiously large number of ambiguous entities in your life.”

“Smart arse.” Eggsy weighs the pros and cons of telling him even just a little more. He didn’t want to keep conflating the two anymore, but he somehow knew that, one way or another, Victor would continue to dig for answers, especially seeing as how so many remnants of Harry were determined to rise up to the surface lately. “His name was Harry Hart. He was a great man who taught me everything about being a true gentleman.”

Victor keeps running his fingers over the notches in the wood. When he looks up at Eggsy, there’s something hard and polished in his eyes that Eggsy can’t place. “Sounds like he meant more to you than just a mentor would.”

And there it is. Eggsy finally recognises it. _Jealousy_. It leaves him stupefied in wonder. “Victor, he died on V-Day.”

He doesn’t know why he felt the need to clarify that point, but it goes far in softening the consternation in Victor’s gaze as it fades into a quiet note of shame. “Ah.” Then, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” Still puzzling over the whole curious incident, but unwilling to prolong Victor’s clear discomfort, Eggsy fetches a towel from the rack and turns the tap on to scalding hot. It’s easier to fall into a pedagogical mindset instead. “Well. First thing’s first: a hot towel to loosen the pores.”

He lets Victor guide him back to bed and fuss with his pillows until he’s more or less sitting up in a slightly reclined position before Victor drapes the hot towel over the lower half of his face and neck. It feels so good in contrast to the constant ache of his ribs that Eggsy can’t help but emit a contented noise while closing his eyes, listening to the rhythmic scrapes of Victor honing the blade on the strap. There _had_ been an electric shaver in Harry’s personal effects, probably for those mornings when convenience took priority over luxury, but Eggsy prefers the ritual of the razor. Done right, he doesn’t even have to shave as often.

When Eggsy reopens his eyes, he finds Victor regarding him with amusement and, dare he say it, fondness. It does wonders for his expression, which Eggsy has only just realised is so often rigidly carved in challenging defiance.

“You look like a very contented cat,” Victor tells him, and Eggsy can’t argue with that. 

Victor works up a lather of shaving foam in a dish and applies it to Eggsy’s face as carefully as a painter would apply strokes to a canvas. This time it’s Eggsy who is amused, especially when Victor takes a bit of flannel to carefully clear away the foam over Eggsy’s lips.

“Now you look like an old man,” Victor says.

“I _am_ an old man,” Eggsy replies.

“Not to me, you aren’t.”

The trickier part comes next, and Eggsy can’t say he isn’t nervous as Victor brings the edge of the blade to his cheek, leaning in so close, he can smell the freshly laundered scent of detergent from his boiler suit. “Angle down,” he mutters, satisfied when Victor readjusts his grip.

He really needn’t have worried, though. The blade skims over the contours of his face with just enough pressure to remove the bristles with it, a smooth clean shear, no hesitation or accidental knicks. Victor sits up straighter with a successful smile, cleaning the foam off the blade. “Easier than I thought.”

“This is the easy part,” Eggsy says, because it falls to him to impugn a little humility in the boy.

But many things come easy to Victor. He has a remarkably steady hand. His fingers know every which way to tip Eggsy’s face with just the lightest touch beneath his chin. He’s so close, it’s actually very difficult not to look into his eyes, so Eggsy has to awkwardly settle for staring at his pink lips which never quite seem to close when Victor’s fully concentrating on something, or the voluminous fluff of his curls or or the cleft in his chin or the mole beneath his left nostril. What was the likelihood that two different men would even have the same mole in the exact same location?

Eggsy is aware of the exact shape and dimensions of Victor’s body, who is just as tall as Harry, but somehow seemingly more impossibly skinny even when Harry had always been very slender. But Harry had decades of hard-won muscle on his frame, and despite the gruelling training exercises Kingsman was putting him through, Victor is still soft, still so young and untested.

He is aware of the heat Victor’s body gives off, the weight of it making a slight impression in the mattress beside Eggsy’s. Solid. Not altogether immaterial. A very real, very whole presence.

He is especially aware of when Victor tips his face to the ceiling and takes the blade to his throat. It should make him feel on edge, Eggsy thinks, having such a sharp implement wielded by another person against a very vulnerable spot, but it doesn’t.

With a start, Eggsy realises that not only does he think he _trusts_ Victor, but apparently his subconscious, certainly his body, does too.

“There we are. Like a new face, you have.” When Victor mops up the last traces of foam, he fixes Eggsy with his attentive focus, face so close, Eggsy can feel his breath ghost across his newly shorn skin and count the flecks of brown and black in his irises.

What madness overtakes him that he takes hold of one of Victor’s hands and presses the back of it against his cheek? “Good?” he whispers.

Victor swallows as he wordlessly nods. Eggsy’s too close not to watch his throat bob up and down.

“Thank you,” is all he can say as he watches Victor unsteadily stand and set about to cleaning up. There’s a heat in his cheeks that he can’t ascribe to razor burn. His heart is pounding wildly, and to his horror, he realises that all he’s already half-hard.

Over _a boy_. Fuck.

 

_____

 

Some lessons in life can’t be taught and some just plain old can’t be learned from, at least that’s what Eggsy uses to explain the fact that he’s always dealt with his emotions in the same manner as he has always done. That is to say: poorly.

As an impoverished youth, his emotions, which had primarily been anger, were managed through a continuous stream of legal transgressions. As a brother and son, post-Dean, he managed them through rabid assurance that his mother and sister lived in material luxury, in want of nothing ever again. As a husband and father, he confronted his emotions, and by extension, the persons who provoked them, with total avoidance—a habit that had been greatly enabled by his career. As an agent, he didn’t have to think about his emotions at all: there was only the mission. 

Now that he’s been benched, none of his previous go-to strategies are available to him.

Except drinking, which he now does with hopeless abandon, even foregoing the initial pain meds to keep his glass topped up.

“The bombs weren’t remotely detonated, which does lend further evidence to suggest you weren’t specifically a target,” Roxy says, reading through the forensics reports of the explosion on her tablet. “Barely any metal, which made it undetectable on the sensors. Rather clever, actually.”

“I’m glad you think my near death to be so,” Eggsy says.

Roxy finally looks up at him, unimpressed. “You know what I mean. The somewhat crude nature of the materials makes me think we’re dealing with homegrown terrorists, albeit a bit smarter than a shovel this time.”

“You should have Merlin’s team look into any increased activity among the UK’s known domestic groups.”

“Obviously. I know how to do my job, thank you very much.” When he lifts his un-slinged hand in surrender (sloshing a bit of scotch over the sides of his glass that he bears up with it), she softens her annoyed expression. “Is this really what it’s come to? Getting pissed in the library at two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“The sun never sets on the British empire, Rox.”

Roxy narrows her eyes. “It does now without Hong Kong and Gibraltar. Also, I think you meant to say, ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere.’”

“That too.”

Roxy sighs. “Alright, out with it. What’s wrong? Don’t you normally do this with Daisy?”

“Gone up to Edinburgh with her mates,” Eggsy says mournfully. “Some sort of festival.”

“Your mum?” 

“And what? Tell her her least favourite person in the whole world’s come back to life like a bloody cat and that her middle-aged son is still gone on him, even though the wildly inappropriate age disparity is still, ironically, in full effect? I can’t talk to my mother about my love life. Besides, she still blames me for the divorce.”

“That’s because a good deal of it actually was your fault,” Roxy says, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Ugh, you know I’m terrible at listening to other people’s problems. Let’s try this again: so now you’re admitting to harbouring feelings for your candidate.”

“Did I? I did...not!” Eggsy sputters before mentally reviewing what he’d said, then wilting and depleting the contents of his glass in one go. “I really am fucked, aren’t I? Oh, don’t give me that look. It’s not like I’d ever act on it.” He’d never dishonour Harry by attempting to molest his unknowing younger self.

“That’s not what worries me,” Roxy assures him. “I just don’t want to see my best mate get hurt again.”

“I’m not that foolish and naive twenty-something anymore.”

“No, now you’re a foolish forty-something infatuated with a naive twenty-something. I believe others would call that a midlife crisis. We won’t even go into all the issues of him being the reincarnated stroke doppelganger of your long lost love.”

“Christ,” Eggsy mutters, setting his empty glass down to rub at his numb face while sinking lower into his chair. He’s beginning to regret ever opening his mouth, which was a common enough regret for him.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Roxy sing-songs. “Your wrinkles will get worse.”

“ _Worse_?” Still, his hand drops from his face anyway, damn her.

“I’ve some night cream you can start using.”

“Oh, shut up.” He’s not going to be self-conscious about this. He’s not. But just to be a little shit back, he adds: “I’m allowed to age gracefully. I’m a man.”

Bit sloshed or not, he’s still got the reflexes to dodge the tablet Roxy chucks at his head.

 

_____

 

 _My God_ , Eggsy thinks when he sizes up all the Bors recruits for the first time, _what are they feeding them?_

Just about every single recruit left in the trials is mammoth in size: ridiculously taller than Eggsy and broad-shouldered, their boiler suits stretching tight across their chests like the other knights had all up and decided they were only going to pick direct Viking descendents this time around. Even Angeline could be a stand-in for a Valkyrie. It makes the sharp contrast with Victor’s tall pipe cleaner like frame almost comedic.

Judging from the expressions on their faces, they don’t appear to be too impressed with Eggsy either, Victor notwithstanding.

“For the next two weeks,” Merlin says, “We’ll be honing your skills in hand-to-hand combat. I’ve asked our Agent Galahad to assist me with this module. He’s one of our finest combatants.”

One of them, Eggsy privately labels him as ‘No Neck’, gives Eggsy a once over, pausing pointedly at his sling.

“You should see the other bloke,” Eggsy tells him. The other bloke, in this case, being an overturned office desk, but No Neck doesn’t have to know that. 

“He will be leading your training sessions while I catch up on some very important work,” Merlin finishes, giving them a final stern look as if to silently warn them to be nice to their new substitute teacher.

When the door to the gym shuts behind him, Eggsy turns back to the recruits and gives them a bland smile. “Despite Merlin’s qualifiers, I bet I know what most of you are thinking. Look at the gimp. He’ll be a soft touch.” Sure, it may feel a bit like he’s standing before the firing squad despite no one looking at Eggsy like he’s a pleb anymore, but he’s still about to give all these posh pricks yet another lesson on how looks can be deceiving. “Fair enough. If you think you’ve the skills, then by all means, you’re welcome to try and take me down.”

Despite the initial scepticism of his welcome, he watches as the recruits trade nervous glances with each other, visibly hesitant. Victor arches a brow but watches the others keenly and not with more than a little anticipation, like he knows whatever is about to go down will be a good show. Eggsy can’t help but feel warmed by his faith.

“Oh, come on! I even have a clear handicap.” Eggsy pats his heavy sling that still binds his arm close to his chest, though he won’t tell them about his fractured ribs. “This should be easy!”

Finally, one of them steps forward. Thickset bloke, dark curls, freckles. Eggsy vaguely recalls him as being Tristan’s recruit. “There’s a good lad,” Eggsy says. “What’s your name?”

“Daniel, sir,” he says in a sonorous deep voice.

“Have you any hand-to-hand training prior to Kingsman, Daniel?”

“Some,” Daniel says in a diffident manner that suggests he’s being refreshingly modest. “I was in the RAF for four years.”

“Very good.” Eggsy takes a few steps back and holds out a supplicant hand. “Then you may proceed. I only ask you to not hold back on my account.”

He watches as Daniel falls into a sparring stance, legs spread, poised on the balls of his feet as he scrutinises Eggsy more closely, stepping in with a few testing swipes to judge his reflexes and balance. Smart of him, Eggsy would bed he’s probably one of the better combatants in the group.

Eggsy’s less confident without his dominant hand at his disposal, but he keeps his uninjured side face forward and waits for Daniel to finally take a more aggressive strike: a feint to his kidney before aiming for his face, both of which are deflected by Eggsy’s free hand in quick succession as he takes a slight step back to adjust. “You’ll have to do better than that, Daniel.”

The goading words prove successful when Daniel bears down upon him in a flurry of punches, jabs, hooks, and an even faster uppercut to follow, which Eggsy only narrowly dodges. The attack forces him to edge further back, giving Daniel enough clearance to deliver a spinning hook kick.

Eggsy slightly bends at the knees and catches his foot, snaking his one good arm around Daniel’s ankle, using it as purchase to twist his whole leg, and by extension his body, around, flipping Daniel onto his back on the mats in a resounding _smack!_

Daniel just about looks as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him, staring up at Eggsy in surprise. The rest of the recruits stand up a little straighter, eyeing him more warily now. Good. They can learn.

Victor looks vindicated.

Eggsy can’t help but preen just a little for him before offering Daniel a sporting hand back up. “Not bad,” he tells him, “but you would have been better off keeping your offence in close. You’re quicker with your hands than your feet and you’ve got two of them to my one.”

He turns back to the rest of the recruits. “Now that you know all my weaknesses, who’s next?”

They surprise him by attacking all at once, which would have been admirable if they had learned to work together as a group better than they apparently had. More often than not, it’s far easier for them to accidentally land a kick or punch on each other than Eggsy. He only has to time it right on when to step back, duck, turn, or almost daintily send an incoming arm to the left by a few degrees (while imagining Merlin is facepalming in his office right about now).

Even when Angeline manages to get an arm around his throat, Eggsy can only send a silent apology to both her and Roxy as he throws his head sharply back into the soft cartilage of her nose, shaking himself free when she loosens her grip.

The rest are handled in as swiftly efficient manner as Daniel, until Eggsy remains the last one standing, albeit breathing a bit heavier now; some of them were quick and did have good initial form.

Well, all but Victor, who had stood off to the sidelines while the others had gone in.

Angeline is glaring up at him, pinching her nose to stem the bleeding. “You broke my nose!” she nasally accuses.

Eggsy crouches down and coaxes her to remove her hands in order to assess the damage. “Not broken, just bruised,” he assures before standing back up, and facing the rest of them. “Not that your enemy would care either way. If you want this job, you have to learn how to take hits. How to hurt and bleed. How to manage that pain. But most important of all, how to carry on regardless, if you must.”

 _Words to live by_ , Eggsy wryly thinks. “By the end of these two weeks, there will be less of you here. Those who remain will feel like they’ve gone several rounds in the ring, and that’s because you will have done. Any questions?”

Not a word.

“Good.”

He’s about to sort them into pairs when from behind him, Victor says, “Don’t I get a go, sir?”

Cheeky shit. Eggsy turns around to find Victor with his arms folded across his chest, biting his lower lip, which wasn’t unappealing in the slightest. “Do you think you can do better than your peers?”

“I don’t know,” says Victor. “Guess we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

Later, it will have occurred to Eggsy that this wasn’t a very good idea, but in the moment, all Eggsy can think is how perhaps knocking Victor down a few pegs would do them both some good.

He moves back into a battle-ready stance and watches Victor step forward. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says in his most benevolent tone.

Victor’s expression turns neutral, but his gaze is calculating. His ready status happens sooner than Eggsy would have thought, coming in at Eggsy not with his hands, but feet first, sliding his ankle inside of Eggsy’s and sweeping forward unexpectedly, not enough to take him down, but certainly enough to upset his balance.

Victor follows up with a quick backhand to Eggsy’s face that Eggsy only just blocks, swinging downwards for a swipe at his sternum, which Eggsy’s forced to accept in payment.

And then it’s on. Fast, sharp, and breathlessly precise.

All at once, Eggsy can see Victor with a few more lines on his face, an umbrella in his hand, that utterly focused expression set upon his features: target, engage, follow up, deflect, follow up, retreat, re-assess, engage.

Victor fights like Harry, systematic, eagle-eyed for any opening and demonstrable weakness. He targets them with the viciousness of a striking snake, no hesitation or cessation. Eggsy finds himself starting and staying on the defencive, deflecting blows, taking some, edging back and around, working twice as hard to guard his injured side.

A foot to his ankle sends Eggsy to one knee, and he realises he’s got to stop holding back or risk being made a fool, first day on the job.

He stops another incoming blow aimed for his face and and pivots on his knee. The bones grind together, he’s lost a lot of cushion in the joint over the years, but he bears the pain to shoot the sole of his foot up and back directly into Victor’s solar plexus, stopping his previous momentum in its tracks.

Victor makes a sound akin to a gasp and staggers back, and Eggsy doesn’t relent, rising back to his feet, pressing his advantage, keeping him on the defence. Victor is long of limb with a reach to match, but Eggsy takes his own advice and keeps in close, making less powerful but quicker jabs to the chest, ribs and stomach, keeping his limbs entangled in Victor’s to keep him from manoeuvring with ease.

But already the fight’s gone on for far longer than any of the others. Eggsy can feel beads of sweat dotting his hair line, the tiredness creeping up in his muscles. His ribs are rioting in protest. Victor, too, is flush, his breaths falling heavier. It’s time to end it.

In a move that would have made his younger aspiring gymnast self proud, Eggsy twists around and snakes his leg across Victor’s slim waist, heel digging into his ribs, arm sliding up his spine to palm his jaw and push it up towards the ceiling. A bit more pressure and he sends them both crashing to the floor, keeping them rolling while grunting through the sharp pain in his injured elbow, leg and body arched in arabesque, until he’s come up top and can bring his other knee down upon Victor’s sternum. He digs it in hard, his good hand finally coming round to cup Victor’s throat, making it apparent that it could just as easily have been a lethal strike.

“Good,” he says through too heavy breaths, meeting Victor’s eyes. “Very good. But you’ve still much to learn.”

His pulse is loud in his ears, face hot and blood up. He finds his thumb tracing a line down Victor’s slender, sweat sheened throat, curve to the jut of his Adam’s Apple, feeling it move when Victor swallows.

Eggsy wants to bend down and scrape his teeth across his soft, unmarred skin.

The realisation, the spike of want that hotly shoots straight through him and ends in his groin, startles him back to reality and his surroundings. Namely, his rapt audience.

Eggsy springs back up to his feet. “Does anyone else feel the need for a rematch?”

He regards them each in turn, darting a glance back at Victor who remains laid out on the floor, though he’s come up to his elbows, watching Eggsy with something far too darkly knowing in his eyes. Eggsy’s gaze quickly skitters away.

When no one else dares speak up, Eggsy briskly says, “Alright then. Find a partner. We’re going to start with grappling.”


	4. Chapter 4

It gets better once he’s earned the recruits’ respect. They listen to him, take him seriously. The work itself is arduous, conditioning them to not flinch from pain, to be vicious and opportunistic in return. Soon their numbers dwindle even further until there’s an odd set of seven in the group, which means one has always got partner with Eggsy.

Somehow, that someone is almost always his own candidate.

“Do you think that Victor might be a bit...” Roxy poses to him one day.

“What?”

“...possessive?” Roxy finishes. She’s been checking in every so often, too attached to let go of the candidates she had begun to raise or maybe fearing Eggsy would fuck it all up.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He herds you like a sheepdog among the group and glares at anyone who even thinks about asking you for one-on-one demonstrations.”

“I hadn’t noticed anything,” Eggsy says.

“Obviously.” Roxy shakes her head at him. “Everyone’s leery. Angeline told me that Victor practically growled at her when she asked you for extra lessons. Are you certain his shots are up to date?”

“Ha bloody ha.”

 

_____

 

One week later in the very early hours of the morning, the London Stock Exchange building in Paternoster Square is blown up using a similar detonation device as the one in Basingstoke.

Two janitors are killed in the explosion, and six security guards remain in critical condition. The country is vastly more concerned with the financial impact though. The LSE remains closed for the day and exchanges across the world are in volatile free fall over the incident.

It’s equally chaotic at Kingsman. No one had seen it coming, and now they’ve all been left reeling. No rumours, no picked up increases in activity.

Merlin is hacking into the Met database to get real-time updates and barking orders from his desk to his minions, coordinating his people on site to pick up evidence the legal authorities would not, while Roxy pretends to be an MI5 official, interviewing witnesses before the actual authorities show up.

Meanwhile, Eggsy can only stand to the side and try not to get in anyone’s way, helpless and frustrated. It had been _his_ mission, after all. The itch of needing to be in the thick of it thrums heavy through his veins as profusely and requisite as his blood. 

But it’s no longer his mission, and no one bothers to keep him in the loop or explain what’s happening, so Eggsy does them all a favour and leaves them to it, making his way to the gym to work out some of his pent up restlessness, feeling the weight of all his years and their correlating ineffectiveness.

Thus two hours are passed in this manner, doing what exercises his physician has cleared him for (namely, those of the _light_ variety), and some things he hasn’t (those of the _not light_ variety). By the time Eggsy’s aware of the passing of time, he’s soaked in sweat, his body is aching and tired, and his arm and ribs are especially displeased by the excess of his efforts.

He showers, changes into something that isn’t a suit, but the thought of going home to Harry’s house fills him with misery, so he takes one of the rarely used and over-furnished guest accommodations at the manor. He tops off his glass and washes down two tablets of pain medication before gingerly scooting himself onto the bed and collapsing against the headboard.

As the haze slowly descends, he squints at the small clock on the mantel opposite him, clumsily flips over the maths before deciding the hour across the world ought to be alright, and places the call before he can rethink his decision.

But all his doubts get washed away in the warmth that suffuses him at hearing a young girl’s easy, happy tone. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, Plum. This isn’t a bad time, is it?”

“No, I’m revising.”

Eggsy laughs. “I believe that’s when you should be keeping your head down and nose to the books, young lady.”

“It’s boring.”

“I bet it is for a smart girl like you. What else have you got going on?”

He closes his eyes to the sound of her singsong voice washing over him, chattering away about her school, her lessons, her teachers, her new mates, the new puppy. It’s half in English, smattered with increasing bits of Japanese, though Yumi hardly seems to be aware she’s doing it. Eggsy wonders if she’ll begin to do the same to him, gradually replacing him with Derek whenever she thinks about her father.

 _You don’t have to let that happen_ , he can hear his inner Roxy cricket say. “Plum, how would you like to spend some time with me in March? We can go see Aunt Roxy and your mates, Izzy and Ros. They miss you so much, and your mum already said it was okay.” Best to plant those seeds early to ensure they firmly took root.

“Yeah!” Yumi crows with the eager, conscious-free enthusiasm of one who still thinks her parents are cool.

“Then we’ll plan on it. We’ll do only the things you want,” Eggsy promises, smiling so wide, his cheeks hurt.

“Can we get a puppy?”

“You just got a puppy!”

“Yeah but I don’t have one in London.”

“And who’s going to watch the puppy when you’re not in London?”

“You like puppies, Daddy.”

“Darling, Daddy doesn’t have time to take care of a puppy. He works too much.”

“You always work too much.” There’s a pout to her tone, and he knows she doesn’t mean it cruelly, but the words are a sharp blow anyhow.

By the time he reluctantly lets her return to her books, he feels both better and worse, curling up in the centre of the bed, bile rising at the back of his throat, stomach rolling, arm now just one throbbing ache.

He doesn’t know how long he remains like that, focused on the darkness behind his eyelids, on himself existing as nothing more than a mass without feeling or thought. Time retracts and narrows to small pinpoint. His mind grows drowsy and maybe he even nods off for a bit, because the next thing he knows, he’s abruptly pulled up into awareness by a sharp series of raps upon his door.

It’s almost evening. The last rays of sun stream in through the windows and spear his clammy skin. His head feels muzzy and filled with wool. Somehow, he musters his voice, dry and rasping. “What is it?”

“It’s Victor,” comes the muffled reply. Eggsy mulls over whether he ought to be surprised or not when Victor adds, “They told me you were here. Agent Lancelot said she was going to stop by soon.”

“No privacy at Kingsman, right,” Eggsy mutters, running his hand down his bleary face. After another moment of indecision, he says more loudly, “Come in, then.”

The door slowly opens and Victor’s head peeks around the wood. He frowns when he catches sight of Eggsy. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Realising the fetal position wouldn’t exactly inspire much confidence, Eggsy slowly rotates back to his back, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s just been a long day.”

“I saw on the news,” Victor says, finally stepping further into the room, only stopping once he reaches the foot bed. “Do you know who did it yet?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a part of the investigation.” He tries to shrug and ends up wincing. “But it’s in good hands.”

“I thought you were supposed to be recovering from your injuries. You almost look worse now.” This motivates Victor to finally sit down next to him at the edge of the mattress.

Eggsy sighs. “I don’t take to inaction very well.”

“So I see,” Victor dryly replies before pulling one of Eggsy’s legs into his lap and pushing up the fabric of his trackie bottoms.

“What are you doing?” Eggsy asks, finding himself too weary to summon the alarm for it.

“I have a certification in massage therapy.”

He runs through his mental list of Victor’s records. “No you don’t.”

“Alright, no,” Victor admits with a rueful smile, but those clever, long fingered hands start to dig into the tight muscles of Eggsy’s calf anyway. “But I _have_ studied the body extensively. At one point, I had seriously considered going into medicine.”

And, _oh_ , those hands. They felt so _good_. Eggsy practically melts into the bed, fully submitting himself to Victor’s ministrations, unable to find it in himself to protest further, even if it’s all a very bad idea and so gone off the path of propriety, there was practically no hope of finding it again and he might as well submit to his new home deep in the inappropriate weeds. “Why didn’t you?”

He feels Victor shrug more than sees it as his eyes have fallen shut. “It’s supposed to be intimidating, right? Memorising all that anatomy, all those physiological processes. Organic chemistry. Biology. It just never was for me. It’s like I was born with the knowledge. Took to it so well. I guess that’s why everyone thought I ought to be a surgeon or physician, but...I don’t know. It didn’t feel right, doing it because it was easy.”

Victor’s hands move on to his foot, removing the thick sock and applying such delicious pressure into the arch. Eggsy can’t help the groan that slips past his lips, which is a shame, because Victor’s hands suddenly freeze.

He’s about to complain when they start back up again.

“You _are_ admittedly good at this,” Eggsy says as Victor next moves on to his other leg, turning it into jelly as much as he had done with the other. “If you don’t win the title, I move to hire you as Kingsman’s masseuse anyhow.”

“I wouldn’t care to lay my hands on just anyone, you know.”

Eggsy finally opens his eyes, realising with dread that they were going to have to talk about it now. “Victor….”

“Let me at your back,” Victor says quickly. “You should take off your shirt.”

For a moment, Eggsy doesn’t know what to say or think, grateful for the change in subject, but hardly finding the next one any better, until he finally stutters, “I can’t....I can’t lay on my front. My ribs….”

“You can sit up. Just let me…” Hands dug at the hem of Eggsy’s cotton tee, already pulling the sleeve off his good arm. He’s helpless to do anything more than complacently move as Victor directs him.

His tee shirt remains bunched up at his sling, but the air feels cooler across his exposed skin. Eggsy hunches forward, cradling his ribs with his free hand. He imagines the heat of Victor’s gaze searing into his back. It’s almost too much to bear.

Then, a light touch makes him tense. “All these scars. I thought Kingsman suits were bulletproof.”

“They are.” Eggsy grits his teeth as the faint explorations continue, tracing over every raised line and discolouration. He knows them all and how he received them. They aren’t good memories, on the whole. “But they’re not knife proof. Or immune to shrapnel.” He can feel the moment when Victor pauses over a particularly large puckered divot above his right lung, very much a bullet scar. “And they certainly do little good when one isn’t wearing them.”

“Will you tell me about them?”

No, Eggsy automatically wants to say, but he presses his lips together until the automatic reflex is past. “If you get the Bors position, then I will.”

Victor’s palms flatten across the expanse of his back, creating two pools of heat. “Is that a promise?”

“Yes.” Perhaps he’ll regret it later, but for now he just wants Victor to win by nearly any means possible. And if even this can lend an ounce more motivation for Victor to outpace all these fucking Frost Giants, Eggsy would do it.

He almost misses the quiet whisper. “Then I’ll win it.” And soon it’s lost to the feel of Victor’s fingers digging into the knots of muscles in his back.

It’s how Roxy inadvertently finds them when she comes to knock, announcing herself at the same time. It’s become automatic for Eggsy to say, _Come in_ , whenever she does that he doesn’t stop to think for a second of how his rather compromising position looks until he catches her face: raised brows, a slight parting of the mouth, which, for Roxy, is tantamount to being gobsmacked. 

“Oh,” she says, blinking and wrestling her expression back under control. “I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”

“Uh.” Victor has practically leapt across the room, ducking his hands behind his back as if they held incriminating evidence. Eggsy just remains frozen to the spot, shirt off, relaxed from Victor’s talented hands. “No. I mean...no. Victor was just. We were just. He was helping me.”

“I see.” Roxy was so good at making the most innocent remarks sound like indictments. “Well, I thought I’d stop by to inform you how the mission was going.” She pointedly looks at Victor. “As a courtesy.”

“I’ll go,” Victor says with a quick nod, infusing the gesture with the effortlessly smooth gracefulness Eggsy had always envied.

“Nonsense,” Eggsy finds himself saying as he sets his shirt to rights, stopping Victor in his tracks, before he looks back at Roxy. “Victor’s already heard about what happened this morning. I’m sure he’d be interested in learning what’s gone on since then, wouldn’t you, Victor?”

Roxy arches a brow, and Eggsy knows that expression clear as day. _Really?_

“If it’s permitted, then yes, I would,” Victor says.

“It’s permitted because I say it is,” Eggsy tells him, even though that isn’t true at all.

Roxy lets it lie, bless her, instead toeing off her shoes and smacking at Eggsy’s leg with the tablet she carries with her. “Then budge up.”

“What are you doing?” But he pushes himself to the centre of the bed anyway as she climbs in next to him.

“I’ve been on my feet since two a.m. and I’m bloody tired,” Roxy’s tone brooks no argument. “It you want to know what’s happening, we’re going to have to do this lying down.” Once she’s settled, she casts a glance over at Victor. “Well? In or out, Arden?”

“Er.” After a false start, Victor approaches the bed and tentatively sits down on Eggsy’s other side.

“I feel like I’m back at one of Daisy’s sleepovers,” Eggsy grumbles.

“Just lie back and think of England,” Roxy says before turning on the tablet and pulling up a video. “But at least we now have some idea of who we’re dealing with. Early days yet, but it’s likely this had to be partly an inside job carried out by a member of the staff. We intercepted this before they managed to post it to the world at large.”

On the screen are four men wearing Punch and Judy masks. All likely male, close in height and weight to each other with one having a slightly darker skin than the others. There is little else that is telling about where they are. Nothing in the background that stands out, just a large white tarp. 

Their message is equally as empty, played through a voice changer.

_For too long, the weeds of capitalism have threatened to strangle us!_

“Socialists? Anarchists?” Eggsy asks.

“Bit of both, I’m guessing,” Roxy confirms.

_Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks!_

The monologue goes on. Lots of obvious eleventh-year Marx quotes. Threats to upend the world by destroying the pillars and driving gears of capitalism, with today being the dawn of a new era, Hong Kong and New York will soon be next, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.

“I’m assuming the profile is mid-twenties, unemployed, but highly educated lads I’d say were from the Midlands, maybe?”

“Just about. We couldn’t trace the location of where they uploaded it. Too many proxies,” Roxy says, “And they’ve scrubbed the metadata from the video itself.”

“So we don’t know when they’ll hit the other markets.”

“Well, that’s the thing. They might’ve reduced the building to rubble and taken out the digital infrastructure, but they haven’t actually destroyed the LSE. There’s a redundant data centre in Milan, and already they’re working on making another backup elsewhere, probably multiple elsewheres. Once our helpful media outlets report that bit in an effort to quell some of the volatility….”

“They’ve got to hit Milan, and soon,” Eggsy finishes.

“We’d like to end it sooner than that, but if all else fails, we’ve got a 24/7 guard in place around the centre.”

“I think they’re from Corby,” Victor says, causing Roxy and Eggsy to turn to him in unison. “The dialect. Bit different, right? There was a Corbyite in the Army. They spoke like him.”

“That narrows it down,” Roxy says approvingly. “I’ll coordinate with Merlin to start canvassing the area and compare names with LSE staff. Get some boots on the ground and see if anyone’s noticed any future revolutionary leaders in their midst.”

“Well done, all,” Eggsy praises, though he directs his words mostly to Victor, who returns it with a small, shy smile.

 

_____

 

“Oh, cheer up, Merlin!” Eggsy urges, though he can’t keep his big, shit-eating grin off his face and hasn’t since they’ve re-entered the mansion. People are probably starting to think he’s cracked.

Merlin can still move like a bullet train when he has a mind to; his long legs give him a significant advantage in eating up greater distances, practically forcing Eggsy into a jog just to keep up, which do his injuries no favours, probably just as Merlin intends. He doesn’t even look at Eggsy or deign to respond.

“Aw, there’s no need to be sore about it,” Eggsy continues, trying for reasonable. “I told you my candidate was sharp, and you never explicitly stated one of them absolutely didn’t have a chute. You’re just mad he flipped the script.”

Once again, Victor had demonstrated his disturbing prescience in the latest test, calmly pointing out Merlin’s particular hypothetical phrasing and reminding the others there had always been a catch to these things, which had resulted in a decidedly less panicked situation overall. The recruits had even all bonded together and cooperated well with each other just in case, partnering up and deploying their chutes in orderly fashion.

Shame more than half of them were still sent home, though, as it’s still bloody difficult to actually land within a designated target from such a height. It makes Eggsy want to retroactively go back in time and gratefully hug Roxy’s younger self all over again.

“Even in a whole different lifetime, Harry still manages to annoy me,” Merlin grumbles under his breath. It must have been unintentional, or he hadn’t meant for Eggsy to have heard it, because he visibly freezes and claps a hand over his face.

Well, too late. If anything, Eggsy’s manic grin grows to Joker-levels of width as he takes a mighty leap forward to cut Merlin off and force him to stop, releasing a crow of triumph and pointing a finger in his face. “You finally think I’m right, don’t you? I _knew_ it! I knew it all along!”

“Get your finger out of my face,” Merlin replies calmly.

“Not until you admit I’m right.” He wags his finger some more for good measure.

Except, when Eggsy expects Merlin to simply sigh in weary resignation or glare half-heartedly at him as he always does, Merlin completely blindsides him by becoming visibly angry.

Really angry.

His eyes go scary dark and cold. All the lines on his face petrify into rigid, cutting edges. It’s like a whole other person has inhabited his skin. Had there been a gun nearby, Eggsy fears he wouldn’t have hesitated in popping a few bullets into his face there and then before fetching a cuppa.

He suddenly looms into Eggsy’s space, causing him to flinch back. “You need to stop with this nonsense, do you hear me? Or I’ll send your boy packing myself on account of his sponsor being an insufferable arse.”

This time when Merlin shoves past Eggsy to continue his thunderous retreat back to his office, Eggsy doesn’t follow, rooted to the spot by the unexpected blowback and wondering just where the fuck all that had come from.

 

_____

 

“And then he threatened to kick Victor out!” Eggsy finishes recounting to Roxy, giving a little rock by his foot a frustrated little kick. It’s heavier than it looks, though, and only travels a short distance before rolling to a stop as if to mock him. “I haven’t seen him that angry in a long time. He practically bit my head off. I mean, what the actual fuck, right?”

Roxy gives him a look that is half commiseration, because there are a handful of times in every Kingsman agent’s life where they have the misfortune to experience Merlin’s displeasure, and half, always, exasperation. Still, Eggsy thinks the sympathy is weighing out a little more in his favour this time. “You know Eggsy, you weren’t the only one to have lost someone close to you on V-Day.”

Eggsy gives her a look like she’s daft. “Well, obviously I wasn’t. There being, of course, loads of people who—”

“Not talking about everyone. I mean Merlin.”

Eggsy stops in his tracks, and Roxy patiently pauses beside him. “What about him?”

There’s not much to look at on this particular stretch of road, just a lot of fields and a single block of semi-detached brick homes on the edges of Corby where the address of their suspect, one Edward Truscotte, former employee of the LSE custodial staff, is still listed. Turns out, Truscotte only had temporary lodgings in London at the time of the bombing (which were now abandoned), further lending suspicion he’d been involved.

Roxy didn’t even have to bring him with her seeing as how it isn’t even his case anymore, but a) she knows him too well to not know how put out he’s been over being benched and b) it was a long, boring drive up besides and she appreciated the company.

Now, however, she looks like she very much is second-guessing her choices. “I’m talking about the fact that you weren’t the only one to witness Harry getting killed.” When Eggsy’s eyes light up in dawning realisation, she adds, “Now, imagine having known Harry for decades on top of that. How it must have felt to watch your best mate die and being able to do nothing about it when you’ve spent most of your career looking out for him. That it was your job to do so. It must have been devastating, personally and professionally, but he had to hold it together to save the world. He held it together for us rookies. God, it bowls me over still just thinking about it.”

Eggsy is very sober now, all traces of his earlier indignation completely doused. Christ, now he feels like ten shades of shit at the bottom of someone’s shoe for having been so fucking self-absorbed, too consumed by his own anguish and loss to not even consider the notion there were other people hurting too.

But Roxy isn’t even finished because she’s a mum now and believes in being thorough. “Now, imagine twenty years later this ghost shows up wearing your dead best friend’s face, sounding like him, moving like him. Only he’s just some kid and there’s an entire lifetime separating the two you.”

“Jesus, Roxy,” Eggsy mutters. “Alright, I get it. Christ, now I’m afraid of what’ll happen if Victor does get in.”

“That’s something Merlin will have to deal with on his own,” Roxy says in a conciliatory tone. “Just...let off a bit, yeah?”

Eggsy grimaces, shuffling his feet and nodding to the houses. “This it, then?”

Not very subtle, but Roxy takes pity on him, allowing them to get back to business. “Should be. Doubt they’re in, but there may be a few clues about.”

There isn’t a car out front and no signs of movement in the house itself. Roxy makes quick work of the front lot while Eggsy keeps watch for anyone who might take notice of two well-heeled robbers. It’s the middle of both the work and school day though, and what little there is that can be deemed a neighbourhood is completely empty at this hour.

The house is as abandoned as they first suspected. And disgusting. Barely any furniture but plenty of rubbish from takeaway containers, paper dishware, and plastic cutlery. Nicotine stained walls. The air smells like some rank mixture of fag smoke, rotting meat, and male body odour. There are _bugs_.

“Good Lord.” Roxy cringes as she wades through the sea of plates and pizza crusts and swats away the flies. “How do people live like this?”

“Speaking from personal experience, men are disgusting by nature when left to their own devices,” Eggsy tells her.

“You were a fairly neat dorm mate, from what I can remember.”

“I had to suffer the indignity of living with my step-father’s filth in addition to being his punching bag. I became allergic to mess.”

“Hmm, broken home syndrome. I’d take it up with the school board as a possible new official deterrent,” Roxy teases, because by unspoken mutual agreement, this is the only way they broach Certain Topics. “Might be onto something.”

“You public school girls sure do love your corporal punishment,” Eggsy leers, earning an empty aluminium can that pings off his skull. Damn these injuries, he's getting slow.

The good humour, however, dies a swift death when they enter the kitchen, because it’s there they discover the source of the aforementioned rotting meat:

Amidst a swarm of flies and concentration of putrid decay, the bodies of their four suspects have been laid out on the floor, face down, with dried up pools of blood spread out beneath their heads. Clearly dead for several days now. Murdered execution style. Now that they served their purpose, someone bigger and badder must have wanted to tie up loose ends.

From underneath the hand he’s using to cover his nose and mouth, Eggsy says, “Well. That escalated quickly.”


	5. Chapter 5

After his doctor gives Eggsy a scathing dressing down for pushing himself too hard and setting back his recovery by weeks, one of the few remaining forms of physical exercise left to him are mild, geriatric-like walks through the grounds, which he does only very late at night or very early in the morning so as not to be seen and laughed at by others.

But as if to witness this latest blow to his pride, Victor insists on accompanying him under the guise of walking Marmite. Except the stupid creature could only trot about for less than half a kilometre before flopping over, forcing Victor to have to carry him the rest of the way.

It’s still very early morning now, the sun barely cresting the horizon and painting the sky, the tops of the trees, and the icy grass a rather admittedly brilliant shade of orange. It’s especially chilly today, which makes all his injuries hurt worse somehow, his ribs sore and back stiff. Eggsy’s embarrassing exertions formulate as clouds of breath from his nose and mouth. He knows Victor is intentionally slowing down his own gait so that they can walk side by side, footsteps crunching along the gravel pathways.

The rat is comfortably and warmly nestled in Victor’s arms now in his stupid little jumper, gazing up at Eggsy with sleepy, half-lidded eyes, wordlessly telling Eggsy how blissful it is to be held and adored by Victor, to get to sleep against his warm body each night, to lick food off his fingers and—

—and he’s working himself into jealous lather over a rat that dares call itself a dog. God, he misses JB sometimes. Maybe Yumi’s right and he should get another one.

Oblivious to Eggsy’s profoundly idiotic inner turmoil, Victor suddenly asks, “What would you like for Christmas?”

Eggsy frowns. Honestly, he’d forgotten Christmas was even approaching. It’s not exactly a favourite holiday in the Unwin household. “You don’t have to get me anything.”

Shit, did he even get anyone anything yet? Roxy was usually good at reminding him of these things. Last time he forgot Yumi’s birthday, he had to scramble to ship her gift overnight for easily ten times the price of the actual gift itself, and then the stupid thing had been held up in customs for another two weeks anyway.

“What if I want to?” Victor asks.

Eggsy tries to think of the few things he genuinely enjoys these days, but all that comes readily to mind is a good scotch, an exhausting shag, and hearing his daughter’s voice. There’s not much Victor can do about the third, and Eggsy probably has half the world’s reserves in his cellar by now anyway. He’s not even touching that second item. Nope.

“You know what would make the best Christmas gift?” he asks Victor instead.

Victor rolls his eyes. “Winning the Bors title.”

“Precisely,” Eggsy says, pleased. The boy learns fast.

“Will the trials even be over by then?”

There’s only three recruits left. In fact, the loyalty test ought to be coming up soon, although Merlin refuses to keep him apprised of the schedule or what will happen, claiming it’s to maintain as much impartiality as he can, which is bollocks, because Eggsy would never help Victor cheat to win something so important. Probably. “Yes, I should think so.” And then after that, the 24 hours together, which Eggsy was both looking forward to and dreading.

“Have you got plans for Christmas?” Victor asks.

“If I’m not called away on mission, I suppose I’ll have to put in some face time with my mother and sister, but I usually try and duck out before the annual viewing of _It’s A Wonderful Life_.” What he doesn’t add is that he usually just goes home to drink himself into a stupour alone.

“My parents host a dinner party every year. More like a ball, really. They know so many people. If this thing wraps up before that, you’re welcome to join me at some point during the evening,” Victor says casually, not looking at Eggsy at all. “If you’re around.”

“That’s very kind,” Eggsy says, proud of how even his voice emerges. Not panicked at all. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“You know what I’d like for Christmas?”

“Aside from winning the Bors title?”

“Aside from winning the Bors title,” Victor indulges him good-naturedly, but the determination in his gaze hits Eggsy like a tire iron. It’s the one that smoulders and compels and used to leave Eggsy weak-kneed countless times before once upon a time, and not even a smooth, youthful face can ameliorate its effects now. “It would be to see you.”

“I’ll try,” Eggsy finds himself saying through his very dry throat before he can stop himself. Damn. He’s got to walk it back. What a disaster. “But I can’t really make any promises, what with missions and all. And who knows, you may well be on your first mission by then as well.” Maybe that sounds too non-committal and cowardly, so for good measure, he babbles on, “But if none of those things happen, we’ll...uh, see.” 

It must be good enough for Victor, because he smiles at Eggsy, fleeting and quietly pleased. “Alright.”

Eggsy inwardly winces and wonders if it’s too late (or rather, too early) to blame his incoherency on mixing his meds with alcohol. At least his cheeks are already pink from the cold, even if they now feel anything but.

 

_____

 

Kingsman actually has two gyms, a large, all-inclusive one for agents and staff to enjoy, and another, smaller one for those who have yet to prove their worth, aka: the bottom feeders, aka: the recruits.

A primary feature of the latter is how three of its walls are made almost entirely of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, ostensibly so that the recruits could monitor their form as they trained, but since their first night, they all now knew they were living in a veritable fish bowl.

It is through said two-way glass that Merlin silently observes Victor’s sparring match with Angeline, who is regrettably still in the running, while jotting down the occasional notation.

Instead of watching the two recruits, because he knows that if he glances at Victor even once, he won’t be able to stop, Eggsy watches Merlin.

He tries to recall Merlin’s younger self, which admittedly hadn’t been all that young at the time. The one he first met with less age spots and lines on his face, when his brows weren’t snow white and his body had simply been lanky rather than slightly on the wrong side of just a little too frail.

“You’re staring,” Merlin says without even looking at him. It’s the first words he’s spoken to Eggsy in days. The Cold War must be over. 

Eggsy sags in relief, stifling the temptation to simply break down and weep at Merlin’s knee. “I want to...apologise. For my behaviour. About Victor.”

Merlin doesn’t turn his head, but Eggsy can see how his brows twitch in response, which is an encouraging enough sign that he’s at least still listening.

“It never occurred to me how others would feel about seeing such a familiar face again. Or that Harry obviously had a whole other life before me. Or other friends.” With this last, Eggsy looks pointedly to Merlin, who finally meets Eggsy’s eyes.

His gaze no longer holds any trace of anger, but it’s been replaced by an old, weary sort of melancholy that isn’t, arguably, an improvement. “It took me a long time to really understand Harry was gone,” Merlin finally says. “So many things happened that day, and several days thereafter. There hadn’t really been any time to let it sink in.”

It’s been awhile, but Eggsy can vaguely recall the harried blur of weeks after V-Day. He had spent that whole period in a kind of functional shock between witnessing Harry’s death, killing his first (or several hundred) people, and saving the whole bloody world. Most of the details of what had happened after have become lost to time, though logically, Eggsy knows they must have been busy setting everything back to rights, cleaning up, assessing how much damage Kingsman itself had undergone. They had just going through the motions, all of them, only Roxy and Eggsy eventually found other things in life to keep them grounded while Merlin had just...let the work consume him.

Rebuilding the table. Weeding out Chester King sympathisers. Controlling the damage from the loss of most of the world’s leaders. They’d been taking it for granted through the years: Merlin’s reliable, continuous presence.

“Sometimes I wonder if I ever really dealt with it at all,” Merlin admits softly.

Despite his earlier conviction, Eggsy spares a brief glance to the recruits still going at it, and it's a mistake, even when he tears his eyes away just as quickly. The searing visual of Victor with sweat-darkened curls clinging to his forehead and the definition of muscles shifting under his shirt is like a flash shadow now burned into his memory. Desperate to find more even footing, he foolishly blurts out a question he’s wondered for a long time, yet had always been too afraid to ask. “What was Harry like? I mean, before. When you two were younger?”

...and immediately cringes at his own big, unfiltered mouth.

But Merlin is already too wrapped up in his contemplation to feel any potential lingering sting. His gaze is still focused on the two recruits, but his mind is partially lost in time. “A little more arrogant, a hell of a lot more awkward. He was rightfully insecure about his stupid hair and gangly body. But he was fair-minded, even back then. If he decided something was wrong, then it was, and there was nothing you could do to change his mind. Did I forget to mention, he was also a stubborn bastard?”

Eggsy grins, even though it feels like he has to tear his face in half to do it. “I’d gathered as much.”

“We were in the Galahad trials together, you know,” Merlin says, causing Eggsy to look at him sharply in surprise. “Obviously, I didn’t make it through, wasn’t even in the top three, but Kingsman recognised my affinity for technology and engineering and offered me a position in the tech division. Any other rival would have looked down upon someone who could still be considered a reject, but Harry never did. He asked specifically for me to guide him on missions. Said he trusted no one else to have his back.”

Merlin’s voice cracks on the last word and his features crumple in anguish until he finally has to turn away from both the window and Eggsy. He’s silent, his shoulders don’t even tremble, but they do form a stiff, defencive line that warns Eggsy from attempting to even so much as lay a comforting hand upon them.

Eggsy fidgets and tries to swallow down the hard lump in his own throat, ruthlessly suppressing the moisture in his eyes. As ever, he feels wholly inadequate and useless in the face of something he can't punch or shoot. He's gagging for another drink. “At least...he still has stupid hair.”

Merlin snorts, and they both don’t acknowledge that it sounds a bit wet. When Eggsy can see his face again, Merlin's eyes are glossy and shot through with red, but he's fully reined himself back in. “Did I ever tell you about the time he tried to cut it himself?”

“No!”

“He didn’t think I took a photo, but obviously I did. Got a lot of mileage from that one whenever I felt he needed to be taken down a peg or two. Now let’s see where I put it….”

Merlin taps through his clipboard, sorting through a boggling amount of subdirectories to get to what Eggsy imagines to be his blackmail archive. Nevertheless, he eagerly leans in to look over Merlin’s shoulder anyway.

And in the room beyond, Victor, Angeline, and the entire present are momentarily forgotten.

 

_____

 

He can smell the savoury aroma of the roast before it appears round the corner, held aloft by a proud and still very lovely (though he might be a little biased) Michelle. “And here we are!” she declares, plopping the whole thing down in front of Eggsy.

“Oh, it looks lovely, Michelle,” Roxy says, and she isn’t even just being nice. The roast looks and smells fucking incredible.

“Thank you, luv, though I might have burned this one a bit on the edges,” Michelle says modestly, which is a complete lie because every surface on the roast is perfectly browned and not at all blackened. But Michelle and Roxy are now drawn into some sort of ritual that must be performed by the womenfolk, and Eggsy has learned the hard way to keep his mouth shut on the matter.

“Nonsense!” Roxy enthuses back. “I could never do anything like this, and God knows my family’s been made to suffer all my efforts, isn’t that right, girls?”

Izzy and Ros have been made to sit on either side of Roxy because they’d ignore everyone else and only talk to each other if not; they’re both still wearing unchanging sullen expressions on their frighteningly identical faces from that one, despite Roxy’s increasingly desperate attempts to get them to engage with the others.

“Can’t recall. Dad’s new girlfriend cooks really well though,” Izzy says. Or maybe it’s Ros. Honestly, Eggsy can’t tell the difference between the two. “She’s like a professional chef, actually.”

“Oh,” Roxy says, grin still plastered across her face like it’s been glued on. “Well, that’s nice for her. Big chef in a little old Midlands town. I suppose they can’t all make it in London.”

“She used to be really big in London, Mum, but she got tired of it and wanted to put family first. She runs a popular food blog now,” Ros/Izzy pipes up, because the only thing those two are cheerful about these days is teaming up against their mother.

“Well, I’m starving!” Eggsy declares in the strained ensuing silence. “Mum, this is brilliant.”

“Thanks, babe. Wanna do the honours?” Michelle holds out the prongs and carving knife.

“Ah, well, I’d love to, but I’d probably make a hash of it right now…” Eggsy pats his cast.

“Oh, shit, I forgot!” Michelle says, embarrassed to have overlooked the obvious, then her eyes widen as she frantically turns to the young ones at the table. “Oh _shit_. I mean, uh, bugger?”

“Not much better, Mum,” Eggsy says quietly.

“It’s fine,” Roxy waves a conciliatory hand. “I’m sure the girls have heard worse at school. I’m happy to substitute in for Eggsy. I’m actually pretty handy with knives.” Roxy had once been surrounded by five guards, armed with only a small pocket knife. In under ten seconds she had sliced off each one’s left ear. And their carotid arteries. She returned from that one looking like she walked off the set of _Carrie_.

“So what are you all planning for the holidays?” Eggsy turns to the girls and asks.

“Dad and Laura want to take us to St Thomas,” one of them informs him. “He says it’ll be our first vacation as a family.”

Roxy grabs the knife and stabs it into the roast as if she were trying to disembowel it. Michelle bites her lip to keep from saying anything.

“I see. I guess I thought...your Mum talked about spending Christmas down here this year,” Eggsy says, realising that despite all his best efforts, he’s managed to step in it anyway.

“We’d rather go to St Thomas,” the other one says. “It’s not like Mum will actually be here anyway. She always gets pulled into work at the last minute.”

“Don’t that sound familiar,” Michelle murmurs as she passes Eggsy to take her seat at the head of the table.

“John and I agreed to start alternating holidays. This year the girls will stay with him,” Roxy says. She’s enunciating perfectly, which is a sure sign of her distress. She’s also reduced a third of the roast to mince. “Apparently in St Thomas.”

“Hey, where’s Dais, Mum?” Eggsy asks, shifting topics. “I thought these things were mandatory for fam.”

“At some film, I think. You know she don’t eat meat anymore, babe,” Michelle says, frowning.

“What? I’ve seen that girl choke down a whole package of bacon in one sitting.”

“Not since she took some animal ethics class at school or something. Won’t shut up about it,” Michelle says, getting worked up. “You’d think I was Valentine, the way she goes on about murder. Tells me how much my hamburger suffered before its innocent life was taken. She draws lil’ frowny faces on all my eggs!” 

“I’m sure it’s just a phase, Mum,” Eggsy says, rubbing his temple.

“Izzy and I don’t eat meat anymore either,” Ros declares, finally throwing Eggsy a bone. Red ribbon equals Ros, got it.

Roxy drops her carving tools and stares at them in consternation. “You both ate rashers this morning!”

“We've changed our minds since then,” Izzy says, glaring at her mother in challenge.

“Fine,” Roxy grits out, grabbing the nearest side dish and slamming it down between them. “You can have peas for supper. You won’t be getting anything else tonight. And you can forget about pudding!”

“I think I’ve got a frozen pizza somewhere….” Michelle offers nervously. “We can pick off the pepperoni?”

“No,” Roxy says, holding up a hand to Michelle. “They’re just trying to wind me up. In fact I don’t think they deserve any supper at all for their behaviour tonight.” She glares at her daughters. “Leave this table and go watch some telly while us civilised people have ourselves a nice night.” And when they don’t move, her voice sharpens perilously. “ _Go_.”

“I’ll tell Dad you tried to starve us!” Ros shouts.

“Good! His chef girlfriend can whip you up a big fancy salad when you get home!” After they sullenly slink off, Roxy sighs and sinks down into her chair, planting her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry about that. Those fucking girls.”

“Daisy weren’t much better at that age,” Michelle tries to console. “Happens with all daughters, methinks.”

“They haven’t been that bad since...well, since before they decided they hated me,” Roxy says.

“Yumi still loves me,” Eggsy weakly offers.

“That’s ‘cos you don’t actually see her, dear,” Michelle says kindly, even though, _ouch_. “She’s probably a little beastie to her mum too. They just wanna test boundaries right now. Mostly, they get over it.”

“Mostly?” Roxy questions, detaching her face from her hands.

“Yeah, it’s usually that or they get up the duff,” Michelle explains with a shrug. “And then you pray karma gives ‘em daughters of their own.”

Later, Michelle, serves tea for Roxy and a port for Eggsy along with slices of chocolate cake while she insists on taking care of the dishes. It does mean they’re finally alone, though.

As soon as the kitchen tap starts running, Roxy pulls out her tablet from her purse. “Ballistics got a match on a weapon used almost eight years ago in another set of executions,” she says, pulling up the file on her screen and pitching it towards Eggsy so he can see. “It’s the work of a mercenary of whom only two things are known: they’re affiliated with an organisation out of Croatia, although we're still not certain how strong those ties are, and their signature is to use a gun on two jobs and two jobs only, usually well spaced apart in years. They won’t use this gun ever again.”

There are no images of said mercenary, just a long list of the jobs that have (thus far) been identified as his work, almost always several years after the fact when said weapon was used in another murder elsewhere. They don’t even have a name for him or even a nickname. He’s _that_ good, apparently. Eggsy purses his lips and sits gingerly back in his chair. “So, what, he does it as a calling card of sorts?”

“Or _she_. And something like that, I suppose.” Roxy shrugs and mirrors his position across the table.

“So the organisation.”

“Is run by a man named Juraj Uzelac. Self-made, became successful in the gun running business and levelled up. Anti-Western. Has been particularly vocal about Russia’s warming relations with Europe.” This time, they do have an image depicting a rough, mean looking man in his fifties with heavy lidded eyes and a deeply receding hairline.

“So you think he radicalised our dead suspects to carry out the bombings, then crossed ‘em off when he was done. You think he’ll try for the backup centre next?”

“Unknown. We’re still monitoring Milan as well as Hong Kong and New York, but there hasn’t been any suspicious activity yet. We just don’t know any of the players on this.” It’s a major pain point, and why this whole thing’s caught them wrong-footed from the start. They weren’t fast enough in stopping it before it could happen, which was arguably when Kingsman was most successful: their successes don’t make the front page news, only their failures. “We’re researching our suspects’ uni connections. Two of them had been a part of some sort of Ukrainian club, of all things. Might have begun there.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about a case over cake at me Mum’s,” Eggsy says. “What kind of people have we become?”

“I know, right?” Roxy says, emphasising the point with her fork. “This cake is too spectacular not to be savoured. I think I taste a hint of espresso. Do you know if your mum put some in?”

“My mum refuses to divulge any of her baking secrets, it’s not like I’m gonna steal ‘em. I can barely boil water.”

“You steal secrets for a living and you can’t even get your own mother to talk?”

“She’s worse than Fort Knox about her baked goods,” Eggsy says, before his shoulders sink helplessly. “What can I do?” Not about the cake recipe. That is always going to be an impossibility.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Roxy tells him, smiling bittersweetly. “I know this should be your mission, but we’re really working every angle we’ve got. We just got to wait and see what turns up.”

“So my choice is to continue being Merlin’s lil’ pet in the meantime?”

“Think of it as getting to spend more quality time with your candidate. Didn’t we all want that when we were going through the trials?”

Yeah, he absolutely had wanted more time with Harry. Preferably in bed. Or the shower. Or against a tree. Or any way he could have him. The problem is things haven’t changed all that much.

“I’m trying to keep my distance like you said,” Eggsy hisses.

“That’s not what I said!” decries Roxy. “I said to be careful and start treating Victor like he’s his own person.”

“That don’t really work out too well when everything he says and does reminds me of Harry!”

“Jesus, Eggs,” Roxy sighs, but before she can say anything else, she has to perk up and smile as Michelle re-enters the dining room. “Michelle, this cake is to die for. I’m trying to keep myself from having a second slice.”

“Oh, go on then! One more can’t hurt, and besides, your figure can handle it,” Michelle encourages. “Unlike me, who’s getting thunder thighs. ‘fraid Eggsy gets them from me.”

“Oi!” Eggsy protests, which goes ignored by all. His thighs are _fine_. They’re _muscular_. But just in case, he sets down his fork, leaving three bites left on his plate.

“That’s complete rubbish. You look absolutely svelte, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Roxy says.

“Oh, you’re too nice!”

Eggsy suppresses the urge to bang his head repeatedly on the table as it all starts back up again, sincerely contemplating if he can emulate Izzy and Ros and get dismissed from the table as well.

 

_____

 

Later, after Roxy puts the girls to bed (albeit with cheese toasties because as strict as she tries to be, she’s a soft touch beneath it all), she exhaustedly collapses onto the couch next to Eggsy and uses him as her favourite pillow, though she’s careful not to jar his arm or ribs. “You know, your speech changes when you’re at your Mum’s.”

“Does it?”

“It does. It reminds me of the soft, young boy I went through the Lancelot trials with. I do sometimes miss him,” Roxy says with an air of nostalgia. “Why didn’t we ever get together? We get on well. Could have saved ourselves a lot of grief in the long run.”

“I believe we did try that one time,” Eggsy reminds her. They’d both been absolutely pissed, horny, and lonely while commiserating over their respective crumbling marriages. It had seemed like a good idea as any.

“Oh, that’s right. You were so drunk, you could barely move your lips, laughed at my tattoo when you got my kit off, and then promptly fell asleep on me,” Roxy half-heartedly accuses. “Literally, on me.”

“Oh my God, the tramp stamp!” Eggsy recalls, cracking up, though he thinks she’s had it removed since then.

“The aughties were a dark time,” Roxy mutters, smacking him on his good shoulder. “Anyway, I guess I’ve seen too many disgusting bits of you now to ever regard you as a sexual prospect. Like that time you got food poisoning in Peru. And that time you left your glasses on when Tilde came over.”

“And I’ve watched you change out your tampon,” Eggsy adds. “Repeatedly. Each time is freshly horrifying.”

“That’s what Kingsman gets for not giving recruits any fucking privacy. I was very pleased to have grossed you all out. It was like psychological warfare.”

“In the end, I’m glad we didn’t,” Eggsy admits. “I fuck up all my relationships eventually. This is the only good one I’ve got left.”

“Me too, Eggs,” Roxy sighs. “Me too.”

 

_____

 

“So I put together a list of some really nice clubs to which we can take the recruits to be roofied, kidnapped, and pants-shittingly frightened,” Eggsy begins as he walks into Merlin’s private office without knocking because now he just does it to be a little shit.

“No need,” Merlin cuts him off, swiveling in his chair. “I’ve sent them out to the shops this afternoon in London under the guise of purchasing appropriate evening attire for their supposed NLP mission, but in fact, they’ll be kidnapped right off the streets, held in an unknown location, and interrogated over several days.” 

Eggsy’s mouth drops open. “What?”

“I got the idea from you, actually,” Merlin says. “If Victor is, in fact, Harry and keeps on ruining my tests because he knows what’s coming, I’ve got to change things up, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but...this is a bit much!” Eggsy protests, waving at the screens where their three oblivious candidates—Daniel, Angeline, and Victor—are secretly being followed through the London streets like poor little antelope being stalked by lions.

“I call it training for a time one of them will likely experience similar conditions if not worse,” Merlin says. “We’ll get to see where their true loyalties lie and how they handle themselves under actual stress since your candidate has oh-so-helpfully defused all our previous simulations. Oh, don’t give me that look. They won’t be physically harmed in any way. At least not permanently.”

In his long Kingsman career, he’s of course been kidnapped and interrogated before. Several times, actually. They’ve ranged from the run-of-the-mill few rounds with someone’s fists to drugs and waterboarding to the removal of his teeth and nails. Then there was that one time Eggsy refuses to think about and has only ever spoken to his therapist about, and only then, just once. Suffice to say, some had been worse than others, but all had been terrifying at the time.

And, yeah, sometimes there are nightmares still. They used to frighten Asami, who couldn’t understand where they had come from and suspected Eggsy was hiding something, which of course he was. He had to start sleeping in the guest. That’s probably where their marriage started going downhill, come to think.

But he doesn’t want to start shit with Merlin, not after their most recent wounds have barely scabbed over. “I don’t know if I can stand by and watch you emotionally traumatise my candidate for...did you say _days_?”

“Three days should do.” Merlin nods to himself. “When they lose all sense of time, it’ll feel like a lot longer.”

Eggsy pales and turns away. “I’m going to go and get some dog therapy.” He’d even willingly spend time with Marmite over being subjected to this this.

“I’ll let you know when I need you to make an appearance!” Merlin calls after him. “You should probably bring a change of clothes and some towels with you. These things can get messy.”

 

_____

 

“Alright,” Daisy finally breaks down and asks after an especially noisy slurp off the straw in her milkshake. So what if it’s November? A little chill has never come between an Unwin and their ice cream. “You know I’ve got to ask: why do you have eight pugs again?”

Eggsy sets down his own styrofoam cup of creamy goodness to gaze upon the small beasts fanned around his feet, ranging from senior dogs with almost entirely white faces stretching out on the brown grass like fat seals to two young romping pups clumsily wrestling with each other as vigourously as their leads allowed. “I’m thinking about getting a dog. Yumi said she wants a puppy in every port.”

“So you got eight of them? Eggsy, I think you got cheated. Some of these are clearly in their golden years.”

In truth, they’re all the rejects from various recruit trials over the years. Pugs were always put into the puppy selection like some sort of psychological determinant. No one who was sane ever chose the pugs. Even Eggsy wouldn’t have chosen a pug if he had been less of an idiot.

Over time, however, and especially after JB had passed, Eggsy had begun to feel sorry for them. Sure, they led good, long lives within Kingsman’s kennels if they weren’t placed with a family, but Eggsy couldn’t help but think they all knew, somewhere deep down in their doggy hearts, they were unwanted. It was a feeling he identified with...perhaps a little too strongly.

Subsequently, he had started spending an inordinate amount of time with them whenever he’d been able, becoming something of an unofficial pug father over the years, though he’s never attempted to take them all out at once before. Turns out, trying to herd a pack of hard-to-train pugs down a busy London street with sore ribs and only one working arm is pretty difficult. He had begged Daisy to stop at the closest open park he could find inside of ten minutes.

Then he had Daisy to go fetch them milkshakes because he needed to drink his feelings in a children’s rated setting.

“They’re just hired out for the afternoon,” Eggsy says. 

“So are you going to tell me what’s wrong now?” Daisy asks.

“Nothing!” Eggsy immediately denies, but when Daisy just continues looking at him expectantly, he says, “Do I really only see you when I’m bothered about something?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” And before Eggsy can start feeling guilty, she elbows him in the ribs good-naturedly and Eggsy has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from yelping. “But I don’t mind. It’s the only way I ever get to hear anything about your life.”

“I tell you things!”

“Eggsy, you didn’t even ring me when you broke your elbow playing tennis,” Daisy says, nodding at Eggsy’s sling. "I didn't even know you played tennis."

He doesn't. Yech. What a dreadful sport. But _tennis elbow_ had been too good a pun to resist. “I didn’t want to worry you over a silly accident,” Eggsy says. “You could show up to Sunday dinner, Ms Suddenly Meatless. I try to go to those.”

“It’s a roast, Eggsy. It’s a celebration of slaughter.”

“Well, it’s tasty slaughter. And we could always make other things too that you people eat. Like beets.” He gives just enough pause to indicate that surely vegetarians ate other things as well, but he hadn’t a clue as to what. “And besides, I’m there.”

“Yeah, but for how much longer?” Daisy asks.

Eggsy frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Eggs,” Daisy says gently. “I’m just saying you’re not exactly...reliable.”

He stares at her. She might as well have punched him in the throat for how all words have fled him.

His silence must make her nervous. “And I know you have a really demanding job that you love...it’s fine, honestly! But you have to understand, when you leave, it’s not like we’re here sitting on our hands and waiting for you to come back. We’ve got lives to lead as well.”

The resentment had started so quietly, he hadn't realised it was even there, not until an avalanche of sheer _fury_ overwhelms his thoughts and all sense of self-control. He opens his mouth, and the words come tumbling out. “And who helped get you that life?” he spits out, voice cracking sharply like a whip. “Do you know why I work so hard? Harder than you could possibly ever...it’s so you can go to the best schools and have access to the best opportunities and take absurd classes in animal ethics if you’d like instead of working in the back room of some grocers for a pittance! I work like this so you can have everything I didn’t have! Well, I’m sorry if I didn’t make it to all your birthday parties and Christmases. I was working so you’d actually have gifts to open on those occasions!”

“I didn’t need an Xbox Three, Eggsy,” Daisy says quietly, staring down at her gloved hands folded around her cup. “I just needed you.”

Just like that, his anger deflates. Eggsy looks away, finding himself unable to respond.

Because here he is in some upscale little park that allows him access because he looks posh in his bespoke suit, designer wool coat, and expensive haircut, drinking a milkshake from a boutique ice cream shop that only uses organic milk and agave nectar, and getting away with having eight purebred dogs without anyone mistaking him for the dogwalker.

And yet he has never felt more worthless.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m going to ask you one last time.” A hand digs through Victor’s sweat-soaked wet hair and yanks his head back just so he can feel the primal vulnerability of his exposed throat as Kay leans in close to spit in his face and trace a gloved finger down the ridge of his brows. “Tell me everything you know about Kingsman and Eggsy Unwin, or so help me, I will put a bullet through this nice, unlined skull of yours!”

Eggsy cringes. Really, where the bloody hell did Kay come up with these lines?

Nevertheless, they’re effective. Victor’s vitals crowd the many monitors in the observation room. His pulse is racing, pupils dilated wide in fear, and his breaths have turned into low-grade panting. There are deep shadows like bruises beneath his eyes from what has been two consecutive sleep-deprived nights, sharply contrasting with the pallour of his face.

“I don’t know!” Victor desperately insists, eyes wide, voice wavering on the last syllable. “I told you, I don’t know anything! You’ve got the wrong person! I don’t know!”

It’s been a rough couple of days.

There are no perceptible physical injuries, Eggsy is relieved to note, at least nothing worse than what the recruits haven’t already experienced on the obstacle course or in sparring with each other. Isolation, boredom, and fear have been the worst things dished out, and in all honesty, they’re some of the most potent forms of torture that exist.

It doesn’t exactly make him feel _better_ about all this, sustaining that fear over hours and days instead of the few moments of sheer terror he’d been made to suffer before the blinding lights of an oncoming train, but in a sense, Merlin isn’t wrong: anyone who earns a place at the Table will eventually suffer these sorts of conditions. And worse, so much worse. They’ve got to see what these recruits are made of.

It’s time for the big climax though, which is the only reason why Eggsy’s here now, and even this small taste of what his candidate has been through is nauseating. He forces himself to watch as Kay shoves Victor away roughly, and if it weren’t for the fact Victor had been tied down to the chair, he’d probably have been sent arse over teakettle to the floor.

Kay retreats a few steps back, but it’s only to draw his gun and let Victor watch as he raises his arm and presses the muzzle right between Victor’s eyes, causing him to close them with an irrepressible shudder.

There’s a big show made of switching off the safety and pressing the cool metal a little harder into Victor’s skin. “Then you’re no use to me at all, are you, Victor? Don’t you want to live? It’s very simple. Last chance, now. I’ll count to three. One….”

Victor starts shaking his head, pressing his lips together.

“Two….”

The words break free. “I don’t know! For fuck’s sake, I don’t know anything. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! Please!”

“Three. Is Kingsman really worth dying for?”

All at once, the shaking stops in one last breath, like he’s come to a decision and no more energy need be spent. When Victor opens his eyes, there’s more resignation in them than fear.

No.

Eggsy narrows his eyes and peers closer.

Not resignation. _Defiance_.

Victor glares up at Kay, letting him see the full depths of his scorn.

“Yes.” A beat, and then, “Also, fuck you.”

“How very disappointing,” Kay tuts, and pulls the trigger.

Eggsy jumps. He doesn’t know what they did to those guns, but the sound effect of the gunshot is heart-stoppingly spot on.

Victor instinctively flinches as much as his bindings allow, shrinking in on himself, shoulders hunching up, head tucking into them, eyes squeezed shut, and jaw clenched so hard his teeth might just shatter.

Several seconds go by before he realises he’s still breathing, still thinking.

Still _alive_.

When he finally reopens his eyes, Eggsy is there waiting for him like salvation.

“Bloody well done.”

 

_____

 

Victor doesn’t say much in the taxi, wide-eyed gaze skittering all around the backseat and the city lights they pass beneath without the ability to focus on any one thing, teeth chattering.

Wordlessly, Eggsy shrugs out of his wool coat with only a little difficulty and throws it around Victor’s shoulders, marvelling at how very much broader he is in comparison as the coat envelops the boy like a large blanket, and finds his hand remaining on Victor’s shoulder to keep him tethered to the here and now. “Sorry for the bait and switch. But we had to know.”

Victor clenches his jaw again and takes a deep breath, visibly striving for calm. “I know.” His voice is hoarse.

“I’m proud of you,” Eggsy whispers. “So very proud.”

“How did the others do?”

“All passed. Seems we have a good lot on our hands this time.”

“How many times have you done this?” Victor asks, a furrow appearing between his brows..

“The loyalty test? Oh, a handful of mine have come this far, give or take. It’s usually done by tying our recruits to an Underground track and threatening them with an imminent passing train. It’s all very theatrical. This specific scenario? First time. It’s never been this...prolonged before.”

“Do they always pass?”

Eggsy grimaces. “Not always.” Those particular failures held a special sting. “The kind of commitment we demand isn’t for everyone.”

“It felt very...real,” Victor settles upon, eyes finally falling to his clenched hands in his lap. “I’m bloody exhausted.”

Victor smells like days’ worth of accumulated sweat, grime, and the acrid musk of fear. His civilian clothes are filthy. Eggsy wants to press his head to his chest, wrap his arm around him and hold him close in comfort. Wants to so badly, he can feel the heat of Victor’s body pressed against his own and all he has to do is raise his arm.

But he doesn’t. He can’t.

“Nothing that a good night’s rest can’t fix.” This time around, Merlin has taken rare pity on the Bors recruits and gifted them with a full 72 hours with their respective mentors, if only because most of it was probably going to be spent catching up on sleep.

“Where are we even going? Back to Kingsman?”

“No. We’re going to my private residence. I’ve a spare room,” Eggsy says.

It causes Victor to look up at him. “We’re going to your home?”

“Unless you’d rather go back to the dormitory,” Eggsy offers.

“No,” Victor says quickly. “No. Your house is fine.”

But Eggsy isn’t so sure it will be. Not much has changed in the exterior, still the door at the end of the lane, still white. The planter box just holds dry dirt in it after the neighbours complained about the dead husks of plants from his first and only attempt at gardening. There are new French doors that open to the balcony because the old ones had lost their seal, but they’re still in the same style.

The taxi pulls to the kerb in front of the lane and Eggsy holds his breath, turning to Victor to study his reaction.

Victor just looks down the cobblestoned mews blankly. No recognition lighting his features. “Is this it?”

Eggsy breathes again, though he doesn’t know if he’s relieved or disappointed. “Yes. The one at the end.”

“It’s….”

Eggsy quirks a brow, waiting.

“Not what I was expecting,” Victor finishes, flushing.

“Thought I lived somewhere more palatial? Mayfair, maybe?”

“No, it’s not that.” Victor shakes his head. “It’s just...it doesn’t seem like your home, is all.”

Eggsy swallows. “Guess I’ll have to prove it to you.” He pulls the handle on the door to push it open, stepping out of the taxi. “Come on, out we go.”

When Eggsy unlocks the door to the townhome and flips on the entryway lights, his body goes into automation, tossing his keys into the dish on the nearby table and slipping off his shoes while simultaneously wrangling his tie loose from his throat and undoing the top two buttons at his collar.

He only belatedly realises Victor’s more hesitant reaction, staggering through the door, gaze skirting the walls and ceiling and then up the stairs, sweeping across the living room, then the dining room and kitchen beyond, most of which are drowned in darkness.

For a good long while after he’d officially assumed the Galahad title and inherited Harry’s house, Eggsy had lived in a mausoleum. He tiptoed around the half-read books laid out on all the side tables. He let the various foodstuffs in the pantry sit in their tins until well past expiration. He only claimed a tiny portion of the wardrobe to house his very first suits. While he had begun to collect tabloid covers just like Harry had done, he had yet to remove the tributes to Harry’s successes on the walls of his office to pin them up.

When he had been at his most, arguably, pathetic, he had kept Harry’s sheets on the bed, not washing them until they stopped smelling like him.

He’d been prepared to grieve for a lifetime. He’d been _ready_. But life wouldn’t let him have even that much. Gradually, Harry’s home settled a little more comfortably around Eggsy, its walls and floors becoming familiar, the very quality of its stillness. He came to know which floorboards creaked and that he had to jiggle the tap in the kitchen a bit to stop it from dripping. Eventually, Eggsy started walking normally through its rooms.

The house began to change after that. Eggsy had taken down the dead bugs first, because _honestly_. Then the newspapers in the office. Then some of the more ridiculous paintings of dogs and landscapes that hadn’t been to his taste at all.

Ironically, he kept Mr Pickle the longest even though it disturbed him the most, one last stubborn, desperate grip on the man and all the hopes and possibilities Eggsy had once pinned on him.

But eventually, Mr Pickle went too, gifted to Merlin, who deplored the thing on sight and made a lot of noise about incinerating it, but had carefully placed it under his jacket to protect it from the damp when he’d left. Eggsy suspects Mr Pickle now leads a happy post-afterlife somewhere within the confines of Merlin’s home.

And the house had undergone several more transformations after that. When Asami moved in and had her own specific tastes. When they had to childproof it when Yumi came along. When Eggsy was determined to rid himself of every last reminder of his ex.

So when Victor studies his house now, Eggsy wonders what he sees. The walls are mostly bare save for a few pieces of art Eggsy liked and had bothered to put up. The refrigerator is smothered in Yumi’s drawings. The furniture is sleek leather and barely used. The fixtures have all been updated. It’s not Harry Hart’s house anymore, which had sat somewhere at the intersection of charmingly antiquated, hi-tech, and Charles Darwin. If Eggsy had to put a name to his current style, he’d probably call it _middle-aged divorcee, now given up_.

While Victor is wrapped up in his own observations, Eggsy grabs a bottle of water from the refrigerator and shoves it into his hand.

Victor looks down at it like he’s never seen such a thing in his life. “What….”

“Drink it. You’re probably dehydrated,” Eggsy says.

As Victor twists off the cap and guzzles it down, Eggsy moves to his bar and fills two glasses with ice, returning back to him to trade the empty bottle for a sweating glass of scotch.

“I thought you said I was dehydrated,” Victor remarks, staring down at his glass with an endearingly puzzled expression.

“Drink it,” Eggsy says again, “It’ll calm your nerves,” and proceeds to do just that with his own, downing it in a manner Merlin would likely describe as _abuse_.

Victor is far more circumspect with his glass. He’s still standing in the centre of the living room, weaving so precariously on his feet, Eggsy’s afraid a stiff drought would bowl him over.

“You’re just about done, aren’t you?” he says, plucking the half-drunk glass from Victor’s fingertips and surreptitiously finishing off the rest before setting it down. Waste not, want not.

“Shattered,” Victor murmurs, rubbing a palm across his face.

“A bath and then straight to bed, I think,” Eggsy decides. “I find a good soak in the tub cures many ills.”

He ushers Victor up the stairs and towards the master bedroom. His ensuite still features Harry’s beautiful restored clawfoot tub, one of the few fixtures Eggsy had insisted on keeping through the renovations. It was rare he got to indulge in a bath himself, but whenever he did, he liked to imagine how the tub’s previous owner luxuriated in it as well. The length of it was enough for Eggsy, but Harry’s legs must have had to bend to fit.

He opens the door and walks into his bedroom, when, to his eternal horror, he remembers Tilde’s giant purple dildo is still sitting obnoxiously on top of his dresser.

“Oh holy shit!”

It could have been a live grenade for how fast Eggsy leaps across the room, yanks open the top drawer and shoves the dildo into it, turning back to Victor and loudly slamming the drawer shut.

Victor stares at him. He supposes Victor isn’t buying the casual way he leans against his furniture with his arms crossed. “Is everything alr—”

“It’s fine, everything’s fine,” Eggsy says in a rush, pushing off the dresser and heading straight for the master bath. “Come on then.”

He’s all nervous energy, unable to keep still in the small space as he flits about the tub, turning on the taps, adjusting the heat of the water, and then once more before plugging up the drain. He doesn’t have anything so nice as essential oils to scent the bath with, perhaps bubbles? _No_. Victor isn’t a little girl.

“I’m afraid it isn’t much,” he’s forced to admit after a few more moments of hand-wringing, turning to find Victor half asleep while sitting on the lid of the toilet.

His announcement startles Victor from his daze, who blinks slowly several times before noticing the steaming tub giving off soporific heat and then Eggsy. “No, this is very nice. Thank you.”

Eggsy smiles and starts forward as if to start peeling off Victor’s clothes when he stops himself. For fuck’s sake. “I’ll just, uh, leave you to it then.”

Victor reluctantly stands like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, his hands moving to the front buttons of his boiler suit, getting about five undone to reveal a glimpse of the soiled white cotton shirt underneath before Eggsy realises _he’s still fucking standing there_ , watching.

Eggsy jerks. “Right, I’ll just...I’m going to go.” Turning sharply on his heel with military precision, he flees the room in a _dignified_ manner and not like he’s being chased down by armies.

The first thing he does after shutting the ensuite door is head straight to the crystal decanter, also on the dresser, to pour himself another bracing drink, desperately seeking the clarifying burn of liquor to quash any notions, any _visuals_ , of Victor undressing in the room next door. Of slipping into the water, heat pinking his skin, well-crafted slender muscles relaxing, those long legs unfurled over the porcelain rim, a hand only idly stroking at his limp cock, too exhausted to get much of anything going, but enjoying the small licks of pleasure the touches instill.

With the sound of the still running water as a steady, thunderous backdrop, he rattles the ice around his glass and thinks.

Victor will need clothes, so Eggsy digs up a pair of rarely-used pyjama bottoms that were always a bit long on him and an old, well-worn novelty tee shirt Asami had bought for him on their honeymoon in Italy. It started with an _I ♡_ in big black text and ended with the image of a plate of spaghetti, stupid and ugly, and he had worn it everywhere they went. The Colosseum. The Pantheon. The Sistine Chapel. It had made Asami crack up every time the other tourists gave him odd looks, and he hadn’t cared because he lived for the sound of her laughter. 

The water finally shuts off, plunging everything into a deafening, melancholy silence. Eggsy carefully sets the clothes on the edge of the bed for Victor to find and makes his retreat back downstairs.

He manages to go through another two glasses scotch before he realises it’s been a long time and worries whether or not Victor’s drowned himself.

What he doesn’t expect to find is Victor, having changed into the clothes offered to him, curled up on top the covers in his bed, damp tufts of hair sticking out omnidirectionally, all but dead to the world.

Eggsy sighs and hasn’t the heart to wake him.

Moving to the other side of the bed, Eggsy pulls up the expanse of duvet and blankets and tucks them around Victor’s body, unable to stop himself from marvelling at how much younger he looks in sleep. How smooth his face is. How _young_. His hair smells like Eggsy’s shampoo. His skin, like Eggsy’s soap. They had been Harry’s shampoo and Harry’s soap too, discovered when Eggsy bathed in Harry’s tub for the first time; when he used up all of Harry’s toiletries, he replaced them with the same brands, telling himself it was because he liked them.

He can’t stop himself from pushing a wet curl back from Victor’s forehead. It’s the same rebellious curl that always flopped in Harry’s face while he’d been in that long coma, and Eggsy had always ended each visit by doing the very same thing.

“Did it for you,” Victor murmurs, startling Eggsy so badly, he almost falls off the bed.

“What?” Eggsy asks once his heart has dropped back into his chest from where it had leapt into his throat.

Victor’s eyes are still closed, but he speaks again, voice drowsy and slurred. “When they asked me what was worth dying for. You. You’re worth dying for.”

He waits, hardly daring to breathe, for Victor to say anything else, but there’s nothing. The silence stretches on and on until Victor’s breaths even out in a deep sleep.

Eggsy flops onto his back before his ribs remind him of his poor decision-making skills and stares up at the ceiling, injured arm draped across his body, held stiff in its cast. The skin beneath it is starting to itch.

He really does mean to sit up and painstakingly change out of the rest of his suit. Means to turn off all the lights in the house, brush his teeth, and resign himself to an uncomfortable night in the too-soft guest bed.

But Victor’s exhaustion is like a contagious disease, or maybe it’s the booze burning in Eggsy belly and dousing his heavy head. Maybe it’s that he hasn’t laid next to a warm body in bed like this for a long time now. Whatever is the case, lethargy washes over him like a rising tide, weighing down his limbs.

 _Just five more minutes_ , Eggsy tells himself, _and then I’ll be a gentleman once more_ , while he closes his eyes and gradually, unwittingly, allows his consciousness to be dragged down under into the deep.

 

_____

 

The most alarming thing Eggsy discovers when he becomes aware of the world again, is that not only at some point during the night, he’d rolled onto his side and practically plastered himself against Victor, but that Victor had partially un-burritoed his blankets to turn towards him as well. Eggsy opens his eyes to Victor’s soft breaths ghosting along his nose and can count the eyelashes that brush his cheeks. Victor’s lips are slightly parted and soft looking. The soft, stupid little curl is back, curving over Victor’s brow. Their faces are mere centimetres apart at the closest edges of their respective pillows, as if they’d subconsciously reached for each other’s warmth like vines striving for the sun. It wouldn’t take much effort at all to simply tip his head up a little more, swaying in and—

Eggsy abruptly sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, accepting the consequential sharp ache radiating from his ribs and arm because they’re small prices to pay for avoiding doing something monumentally stupid.

It’s early enough that the sky is still dark outside and the pre-dawn air is bitterly cold. Yesterday’s clothes stick unpleasantly to his body like dead skin. His mouth feels like it is cultivating an entirely new species.

He throws on a pair of sweats, drinks a gallon of water straight from the kitchen tap, and sets out just as the sky begins to lighten. Running in late autumn or winter isn’t precisely his favourite activity—the cold feels like a thousand knives stabbing at the insides of his lungs—and running with a busted arm even less so, but he needs to get out of his head, and can think of no better non-alcoholic way to do it than several brisk laps around the neighbourhood.

By the time his knees start to ache, the rest of the city is just beginning to stir. He stops by the little bakery around the corner as it’s taking its first batches out from the oven and returns to a silent house to brew tea (for Victor) and coffee (for himself; these days, tea just doesn’t cut it). He briefly considers setting up actual places at the dining table but scuttles the idea almost immediately.

He brings a change of clothes to the guest bath for a shower because he doesn’t want to disrupt Victor’s much needed rest, but he needn’t have bothered: nothing short of a full out raging battle would have woken him.

The sun fully rises and the day is undeniably up in full swing. The tea grows cold, the pastries grow stale. Eggsy drinks three cups of coffee before his hands start to tremble. He limits himself to checking Victor’s vitals just once. He’s fine, but Eggsy damns Merlin to hell anyway.

He just doesn’t know what to do with himself like this. Usually, he’d be at the mansion by now knee-deep in avoiding paperwork or, more often than not, on a mission. He hasn’t had to simply be idle and _wait_.

Eventually, he breaks down and pulls out his mobile, almost hitting _Call_ on Daisy’s name before he remembers they’re not really on the best terms right now. So he calls Roxy instead.

She picks up on the third ring. “What’s up? Congratulations on your candidate passing, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, yours too,” Eggsy grumbles. “Though it would have also been pretty nice if she had turned out to be a backstabbing little witch at the eleventh hour. How is she faring, by the way?”

“Angeline is very well, thank you. We’ve had a lovely brunch at Luna’s and now we’re going to go horseback riding at my family’s stables.”

“Yours is already awake?” Eggsy asks incredulously. “Roxy, I think you need to have her brought in to see if she’s an actual robot.”

“Eggsy, all these bright young things are used to pulling all-nighters to finish up a term paper and then going out to a raging party the next evening. It’s all that boundless youthful energy. Disgusting, really.”

“Not mine!” Eggsy cries. “He’s still asleep. I think mine’s defective?”

“Well, he is an old soul, is he not?” Roxy taunts.

“Any updates on the case?” he may ask a little too desperately 

“Nothing new yet, sorry, but I’ll let you know as soon as something develops.”

He’s not sulking. “Ugh, fine. Bye, Rox. Enjoy your little robot. Make sure to clean her joints of any horse hair after. I hear it can really gum up the circuits.”

“Absolutely. I can also swing by with a defibrillator later to sort yours out if you need.”

“Cute. I think I can handle it.” Eggsy grimaces.

It’s starting to get well on into mid-afternoon by the time Victor stumbles down the stairs, rubbing his eyes, just as Eggsy had seriously considered going up there with an EpiPen. He’s already consumed half the pastries he bought and tinned soup while making a valiant effort to resist the siren song of the bar.

“Sorry,” Victor says. “My mother used to say I could sleep for a hundred years if no one woke me up. I usually have five different alarms on my mobile set to go off in two-minute intervals.”

“It’s fine, I wasn’t worried at all,” Eggsy tells him serenely before waving a hand at the box of pastries. “I got you something to eat...er, awhile ago. I can heat them up in the microwave, if you’d like. I’m afraid I’m something of a disaster in the kitchen, so if you’d like something more substantial, we can go out or call something in.”

“Yes,” Victor says, and before Eggsy can ask him to clarify, he proceeds to attack the box and devour the rest of the less than fresh pastries with his enviably overactive metabolism.

Eggsy worriedly brews a new pot of tea just in case he needs something to wash down anything that gets stuck.

 

_____

 

“Jane Austen,” Victor comments after reading the spines of several books. “Huh.”

“What?” Eggsy asks, trying for challenging, but the corners of his mouth keep turning up anyway.

“Didn’t take you for a Austen fan.”

“And why not? Jane Austen was an extremely clever writer with insightful commentaries on gender and class relations in Edwardian society.” And when Victor arches a brow, suitably impressed and chastened, Eggsy ducks his head and confesses, “Alright. I admit I have no bloody clue what I'm saying. Only got halfway through _Mansfield Park_ before I fell asleep. Was never a big reader, I’m afraid. I had a shit education, you know.”

Victor grins and turns back to the bookshelves that take up an entire wall, overbrimming with decades of books with no discernment for hardbound or paperback, spy thriller or classic literature. They tended to attract most of the attention of any visiting guests, though, which has been problematic as Eggsy has read only about ten percent of them.

“Shakespeare’s Collected Works?” Victor reads off.

“I’ve seen some of the film adaptations? Sat through a few plays too, but usually it was because I was tailing someone on a mission. I admit I was paying more attention to them than what was going on onstage.”

“Harry Potter?”

“I did read those,” Eggsy says. “And to my daughter as well. Well, the first one." Given how infrequently Eggsy had been around, even that had taken almost a year. "She read the rest on her own. She always was much more clever than I.”

He doesn’t mean to dampen the atmosphere, but can’t help the bittersweet tone that lingers in his words.

Fortunately, Victor spares him. “If you’re not as much of a reader as you claim,” he asks, waving his scotch at the shelves, but careful not to spill a single drop. “Then why all of this? I’ve seen village libraries smaller than what you’ve got here.”

A fair question. For not being very well-read, Eggsy had frequently found himself surrounded by many who were. First in inheriting Harry’s property, which included an already impressive library to start with, which was exacerbated by Asami’s book-a-day voraciousness. She bought and consumed so many that they had to start donating them to the library. She had even took several boxes of her favourites with her in the divorce, though it hardly looked as if she'd made a dent in what was left. Then there were the various self-help books Roxy swore by and left at his house hoping he’d get the hint, but he was only ever desperate enough to skim through any of them just once, immediately slamming them shut when he saw Roxy had underlined a passage describing someone’s fear of abandonment issues and written in the margins, _Yes!!! Eggs, this is you!_

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, taking a large swallow off his glass. They’ve had several each already. Victor already knew how to make martinis and certainly didn’t need lessons in being a gentleman, so all that was left, in Eggsy’s book, was to drink until his head felt pleasantly muzzy and he was amenable towards answering any of Victor’s questions. “People come and go. They leave pieces of themselves behind. Seems rude to just throw that in the bin.”

Victor’s smile is softer this time as he turns back to the shelves, only instead of reading off another title, he picks up a small picture frame. “Is this her? Your daughter?”

Eggsy stands and moves over to him to peer over his shoulder. It’s a photo from Yumi’s seventh birthday, one of three Eggsy had been present for. She had torn through the wrapping paper to discover his gift of a stuffed bear as large as she had been and immediately threw her arms around it like it was her best friend. He’d snapped the photo himself and set it as his mobile wallpaper, then decided to get the thing printed and framed, he liked it so much. He’s a little embarrassed now to say that it’s the only photo of her he has in the house. “Her name is Yumi. She lives in Tokyo with her mother. She’s twelve now.”

“She’s a lovely girl,” Victor remarks as he sets the frame back down on the shelf. “I didn’t think spies could have families and marriages and the like.”

Eggsy thinks about his and Roxy’s determination to defy the odds and have it all. “They can’t. Or rather, they can, but it tends to end poorly.” He waves his scotch at himself. “Case in point.”

“Is it because...you can’t ever tell them about what you do?”

“That’s part of it,” Eggsy says. “Another part, a larger part, is that this work...it changes you. And you change alone, when you and your partner are supposed to grow and change together. So one day, if they’re smart, they wake up and realise their loved one has become a stranger and they don’t know why or how it happened. Hence the ending poorly bit.”

“I”m sorry,” Victor says. “It sounds lonely.”

“It’s fine,” Eggsy brushes off as he moves to refill his glass. “It’s all fine. I’ve got lovely friends.” Or, well, _friend_. “And my work is very satisfying and makes up for a lot. I’m fine.”

He can feel Victor staring at him and refuses to look up. Finally, Victor clears his throat and pulls another hardbound book down. “Oscar Wilde,” he says with something like fond recognition. “I love him. I love this play especially.”

“Which is it?” Eggsy asks, thinking about how the Oscar Wilde had been Harry’s, some of his oldest ones too.

“ _An Ideal Husband_.”

Eggsy can hear him flipping through the pages but by the time he’s topped off and looks up, Victor has the book shut with a look of consternation on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Victor glances at him. “Nothing.” It’s a blatant lie, but Victor is already turning and putting the book back and retrieving another with a closed-off sort of concentration, so Eggsy leaves him to it in favour of putting on some music.

What Eggsy really took advantage of when he inherited this house was Harry’s incredible record collection, all kept in pristine condition and likely worth a small fortune now. Not that Eggsy could ever bear to part with it. He even keeps a record player in prime working order because he loves listening to them so much. He used to keep everything in his office when Asami moved in, but once she left, he proudly brought out and displayed everything out in the open where he could access it anytime he wanted, uncaring if his house became cluttered with relics.

On a whim, he puts on _Hunky Dory_ and “Changes” softly croons from the speakers.

“Could I have another?” Victor asks, suddenly close, it makes Eggsy jump.

He turns around and looks down at Victor’s empty glass, which had been at least half-full less than a minute ago, and accepts it with nothing more than a raised brow. As far as he’s concerned, building up one’s tolerance ought to be in the recruit training manual next to firearms and stealth tracking.

“Are you finished being nosy for the evening?” Eggsy asks offhandedly in an attempt to dispel the curious tension permeating the air. “You know, of all the things I’d thought I’d be showing you here, I didn’t think it would be my book collection.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” Of course, once he’s put on the spot, he scrambles to think of something in particular. He doesn’t know why it had been easier with his other candidates who ever made it this far. Then again, they’d all come from the wrong side of town and there had been so much to show them about the new life they could have. None of that applied to Victor. “My office is covered in tabloid covers as a way to record every successful mission.”

“Sounds tacky.”

Eggsy smirks and hands him his refreshed drink. “Sometimes I need the reminder of why I do what I do. My previous candidates had been...less polished than you, so maybe you should show _me_ something.”

Now it’s Victor’s turn to be taken off guard. “Surely you’ve already seen how I’ve been progressing in the trials thus far.”

“I have.” Obviously Victor was among the top of his class. “I mean something else I wouldn’t know. Alright, I have to ask, ballroom dancing?”

“One of my professors believed I was an uncouth little savage and tried to force me to take dance lessons in the next term, so I spent the entire summer devoted to learning as many as I could,” Victor explains like it had simply been a way to fill the time.

“And then you proceeded to enter the competitive circuit...and won?”

“I had to bring back something to rub in my professor’s face.”

“Of course you did.” This time, it’s Eggsy who grinning. “I’ve only ever learned exactly what I’ve needed to for missions, and most of the time forgot straightly thereafter. Surprisingly not too many posh dances to attend these days. What, in your opinion, is the most difficult?”

Victor swallows a large mouthful of his scotch (they’re well beyond polite sipping at this point) and gives it a good ponder. “Hmmm, quickstep, possibly. Or the foxtrot, for the sheer variation of movements and pacing.”

“I confess I’ve just done simple waltzes, really.” Much to his disappointment of ever getting to experience a sultry tango spy fantasy sequence.

To Eggsy’s surprise, Victor turns and sets his glass on the table and spreads open his arms as if to offer Eggsy an embrace. “Would you like a demonstration?”

“What are you doing?” The smile remains pasted on Eggsy’s face like leftover adhesive after peeling off a disguise.

“Well, ballroom requires a partner. I can’t very well do so on my own.”

“I only have one working arm,” Eggsy says. As far as his excuses go, he’s been able to use that one a lot.

“As you’ve said yourself, your legs work just fine.”

And he supposes that excuse would only get him so far. “We’ve both had far too many libations to do this properly, and did you not just hear me talk about my painful lack of education in this area?”

“I’ve worked with worse.” As if to prove it, Victor steps forward into his personal space, smelling like scotch and old books. He eases an arm around Eggsy’s waist beneath his sling, laying his palm against the base of his spine and gently pries his glass from his hand, taking a cheeky sip before setting it down beside his own on the table. It leaves Eggsy’s only available hand free to enclose within his. “Just keep your spine straight as you can,” he whispers.

Victor had a broader chest than Eggsy originally had thought, especially when it is plastered like a wall of heat against his own. Their height difference had never seemed so egregious before, but now he has to crane his neck more intensely to find his gaze travelling up the lines of Victor’s neck and the crossing the sharp terrain of his jaw. And fuck, he doesn’t get to lead, does he? “What will it be then? Surely not the quickstep.” Not when “Oh! Your Pretty Things!” was sauntering its way out of the speakers.

Instead, Victor slides them sideways as the song bangs into the chorus, dipping a little into it. Ah, foxtrot it is. Eggsy has no choice but to follow in suit, and it all works for approximately two more steps before they scrape the edge of the coffee table, but Victor just turns them away with a debonair flair. “See? Not so bad.”

“For being confined in a few metres of space, certainly.” It means lots of sharp turning to avoid other tables, the shelves, a chair, the couch, the coffee table again. It’s leaving him a bit lightheaded and breathless, it is, although Victor’s got a very secure hold around him, keeping him anchored even if everything else is spinning wildly out of orbit.

“You’re actually more graceful at this than I thought.”

“I did hand your arse to you during hand-to-hand,” Eggsy reminds him. “There’s still some skill left in these pre-arthritic joints.”

“Why do you keep doing that?” Victor asks.

“Do what?”

“Make it seem like your life is nearly over.”

“Statistically speaking, I’m about due for it.”

“Statistically speaking,” Victor says, “You’re anything but average.” Now that Victor has a good lay of the land, he focuses less on their circuit and more on Eggsy himself in a way that makes his mouth go dry. He finds it too difficult to bear that intensity for long, eyes skittering away to keep a watch out for treacherous furniture for them, even though his peripheral vision is a bit hazy. 

Eggsy falters, just a little misstep banging his ankle into the leg of that blasted coffee table again, but it’s at the arc of another tricky turn and is more than enough to upset the already precarious grasp on his balance. Eggsy loses his footing first, and then his feet tangle all up in Victor’s ridiculous legs, and then they both go tumbling down, landing in a fortunate if still painful heap upon the couch. He thankfully takes the brunt of their combined weight on his back, but his bum elbow takes a bit of a hit from Victor’s chest, sending a shooting ache up his arm.

At first, Eggsy thinks their mishap has somehow horrifically sent Victor into a seizure from some previously undetected condition, but no, he’s laughing, face all scrunched up and teeth out like a scenting rodent. It’s the first time Eggy’s heard his unguarded laughter, and entrancing to take in, watching Victor’s face transform above into something bright and impossibly younger, like a supernova he’d rather go blind from than risk looking away.

His senses must still be mixed up by their fall and drink because he’s halfway to doing something monumentally stupid before he can think better of it. When what little good sense he does possess catches up with him, it doesn’t even matter. It’s inertia, it’s giving up, in for a penny and all. 

They meet somewhere in the middle, Victor leaning down, Eggsy closing his eyes tipping his face up, lips colliding against each other in a clumsy wet glide that eventually slot into place just right like a final puzzle piece. Victor tastes like he smells, like smoky scotch and salt, his tongue is all soft and wet heat meeting his, the sound of saliva-slicked flesh and their heavy moaning breaths an alluring accompaniment.

Victor had been quick to lift his weight up off Eggsy’s arm, now he bears down all his weight right into Eggsy’s groin so that Eggsy can feel the rigid line of his cock pressing through the fabric of his trousers to tantalisingly further coax Eggsy’s own along. Eggsy reaches up and drags his fingers through Victor’s stupid hair, free of product and fluffy as a cloud, grabbing a handful to pull him closer and keep him there. It’s been so damn long since Eggsy has lost himself in kissing someone he’s wanted to and he just throws himself into it, a thirsty man guzzling down the ocean, dizzy and elated and thinking for a half a second he could simply go on doing this forever.

It’s a nice fantasy, one he allows himself to linger in for just a little bit long before his mouth starts to dry up and the horrible sense of foreboding bubbles up in his gut like an oil leak. When he cracks open his eyes, the illusion falls apart.

He jerks his head back sharply, a hand to Victor’s chest, and Victor, ever attuned, pulls back, hair a bird’s nest, lips kiss swollen and chin irritated from Eggsy’s five o’clock shadow. The worst part is how arousal still pounds through his veins, how much he wants to pull Victor back in and resume.

Instead, he tries to push himself up, and Victor clambers off of him, settling at the far end of the couch, on guard and wary.

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wasn’t exactly an unwilling participant,” Victor says, brow dipping in tense confusion.

“I know. But you’re young and I hold a position of power over you. I’ve taken advantage of it. Of...so many things. I shouldn’t have done.”

“I...ever since you walked onto base, I wanted—”

“Don’t,” Eggsy cuts him off sharply, watching the wound flash across Victor’s face before it smooths back out like a small ripple in a pond. 

“It’s Harry, isn’t it?”

This throws Eggsy for a loop, finding himself paralysed and staring at Victor in disbelief for too many telling moments before he can recover enough to stupidly sputter, “What?”

Whatever Victor’s searching for in his face, he apparently finds it, because Eggsy feels all his warmth pull back sharply and replaced with a cold, swift absence, transforming back into that guarded, flint-eyed boy back in that Army interrogation room. “It wasn’t just the shaving kit. It’s all these books and their inscriptions. It’s those yellowed newspapers in the box under your bed and that tatty dressing gown in the back of your wardrobe.”

Eggsy’s mouth opens and closes, unable to push words past his lips. He hardly knows where to begin, defence over his actions, denial of their ownership, or offence that Victor had even snooped them out.

“I looked him up, you know,” Victor goes on, a bit more nervously in the wake of Eggsy’s silence. “Couldn’t find much with so many sealed records. But his portrait hangs in the northeast wing of the mansion. He was, what, fifty, when you were my age? It’s like he could be my uncle. I even thought maybe he were a relation, but he’s not.”

“You...you had no right to invade my privacy like that,” Eggsy croaks out.

“It was the look in your eye whenever you mentioned him. It was you always comparing me to him,” Victor says, anguish creeping into his eyes from the build-up of past invisible hurts too long repressed. “The way you look at me sometimes like you’ve seen a ghost. I can’t believe I denied it for so long.”

“No.” Eggsy shakes his head. “That’s not….”

But then from the waistband of his sweats, Victor shakily unveils his trump card, and it’s devastating for them both to behold: a single black and white polaroid photograph of Harry that Eggsy had nicked from one of the old albums in the attic. Young, fluffy haired Harry shockingly underdressed in a thin, too-small tee shirt and low-slung jeans leaning against a graffitied wall giving whoever had been behind the camera at the time a half-murderous, half-sultry look. He knows on the back someone had written in pencil in cramped script, _H. Hart, ‘81_.

Eggsy blearily recalls using it as a bookmark once.

“Do you wish I was him?” Victor asks desperately, looking to Eggsy like he holds his last hope. “Is that what this all has ever been?”

“Victor....” Eggsy begins, but doesn’t know what to say. Every thought he flounders upon slithers from his fumbling grasp as soon as he brushes against it. It’s the booze, but it’s the burning embarrassment of his stupid, obvious heart and it’s the shame of being so easily read even if it _is_ by an exceptionally clever boy, and it’s the pain of feeling too soft and too exposed, like an old, ugly scar.

But his lack of forthcoming denial is damning enough. Victor abruptly stands and the polaroid flutters from his fingers onto Eggsy’s knee.

“Victor, wait. It’s not that you….” Eggsy tries, but he’s slow and uncoordinated, unable to do much more than glance his fingers across the hem of Victor’s shirt before the boy flees, the front door slamming shut with enough force to rattle the house.


	7. Chapter 7

His glasses go off some time in the evening, a subtle beep that can be misconstrued for a text or call in public as necessary. Eggsy turns his head to stare at them sitting on the coffee table, and for the first time in his life seriously considers not answering them. There wouldn’t be an excuse, though. He’s long since been conditioned to immediately respond to them, and indeed his hands are already twitching for the frames before he’s even consciously aware of having done so.

“Galahad,” Merlin greets once the frames are settled over over his nose.

“Victor alright?”

“He returned to headquarters approximately twenty minutes ago and proceeded immediately to the range to deplete Kingsman’s resources of significant amounts of ammo. What the hell happened?”

“He knows about Harry,” Eggsy says. “Saw an old photo.”

There’s a long, broody sort of pause before, “...and you just keep those lying about, do you?”

“Oh shut up,” Eggsy scowls, clapping his hand over his face and smashing his glasses into them instead, which, ouch. “Obviously I don’t. Or, I mean. Not anywhere obvious. I’d forgotten about that one besides. He’s very sneaky. And ridiculously observant. In fact, I think he’d make an ideal spy.”

“So I’m going to hazard a guess and say he took it poorly.”

“He thinks I only brought him into Kingsman because he reminds me of Harry.” And no, he’s not going to mention the snogging bit if he can help it.

“Is that all it is?” Merlin asks with a too pointed tone.

Oh, fuck it. “I may have accidentally, er. We may have….”

“You had sex with your recruit?”

“Jesus, no! _No_! What sort of person do you take me for?” Eggsy squawks. “We just...we just...kissed. A bit. We had _a lot_ to drink.”

“You kissed him,” Merlin repeats. Eggsy winces, and is glad Merlin can’t see his face. “And it wasn’t because he didn’t actually remind you of Harry.”

Eggsy bites his lip. This whole thing is painful. He’d rather set his house on fire—hell, himself, even—than continue this conversation. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, _naturally_. You certainly haven’t simplified matters.”

“You don’t have to tell me it was inappropriate...on _so many_ levels...I know. I just...it was a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again. Because now he hates me.”

He hears Merlin sigh and imagines him rubbing tiredly at his face as he always does when he was absolutely done with Eggsy’s usual bullshit. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Yeah, yeah. You have ‘ _I told you so’_ bragging rights from here until eternity over this one.”

“Nevertheless,” Merlin continues, voice returning back to its no-nonsense, rational self. “You created this problem. How do you propose to fix it?”

His first instinct is to go for complete and utter avoidance if possible via fleeing the country, but he suspects Merlin won’t have it. “For now, he needs some space. And then...and then I’ll have to apologise, and he can decide whether he wants to stay in the running or tell me to go to hell. I’ll respect his wishes either way.”

“You do realise Arthur needs to know about this.”

Eggsy closes his eyes briefly. It’ll be a long time until he can look Arthur in the eye again. And that was even after taking into account that Roxy was shagging him. “Yes, I know.”

“And that in the meantime, you are to have no contact with any of the recruits.”

“Christ, it’s not like I’m some bloody child molester, Merlin,” he grumbles.

“Actually, that’s something I’m telling the sponsors of all the remaining recruits. Given the successful outcome of updating the loyalty test, I have decided to re-examine the dog test and change a few variables.”

“Good, because I hate that bloody test,” Eggsy spits out, diligently making his enmity well known as he has done any time that wretched test is mentioned. Part of it is the very nature of it, but perhaps a larger part is that it stands as a constant reminder of his shortcomings. He’s still the only active agent at the Table who’s failed it.

“Unlike the parachute test, we don’t do this one for fun. It’s there for good reason.”

Eggsy frowns. “Wait, are you saying there’s no good reason for the parachute test?”

“Anyway, it should transpire within the next weeks or so. Hopefully, we’ll weed out a few more this way. God, I’d hate for what happened last time to happen again,” Merlin says, referring to the final two recruits from the last round who remained in a dead heat through every test and challenge Kingsman could throw at them. The only thing that had finally broken the tie was one of them deciding he didn't want to be an agent after all, taking up a position within Merlin's division instead. 

“What are you planning, you sly bastard?” he tries, hoping that for once Merlin is feeling chatty.

But, alas, it’s not to be. “Need to know basis only.”

Eggsy holds up two fingers in front of his glasses for old time’s sake.

“Why are you giving me the peace sign?”

“Oh, fuck off.” But strains his wrist around to correct himself anyway before dropping his hand back onto his chest.

For a few more moments, Merlin is silent but he isn’t ending the call, and Eggsy knows that means he’s measuring how best to phrase his next words. He braces himself, because a tentative Merlin means Eggsy isn’t going to like what he has to say.

He’s right.

“Did you really only bring him in because of Harry?”

This time it’s Eggsy who sighs, giving himself time to let the question sink in. “Honestly?” He forces himself to not blink as he stares at the ceiling above him like it was the manifestation of the issue he was looking at straight on and he was determined not to be the first to flinch. “Maybe in the beginning, yeah. He would do this thing or say this word or look at me in a way that was...it would, yes, remind me of Harry. And yes, sometimes I’d look at him and just think he only needed to remember who he was and then somehow...somehow, everything would be okay.”

“Eggsy….”

“But then for every thing he did that made me think that,” Eggsy soldiers on because there’s a building thickness clamming up his throat and an expanding sting behind his eyes, and if he doesn’t get this out in the open now, he never will. “He’d just as soon do something that was wholly different or unexpected and...and then it would hit me all over again. Even if he were actually some reborn version Harry...he isn’t...he was never my Harry, was he?”

His Harry was gone, and Eggsy was never getting him back.

It’s not exactly late breaking news, but it’s taken two bloody decades for him to truly understand what that means.

The vision of his ceiling blurs and he can feel stupid hot trails of moisture running over his temples to soak into the cushions below him. His nose is starting to get stuffed up, and his lips tremble, but he refuses to emit any telling sounds, clenching his teeth together until his jaw aches, because he’s supposed to be over all of this. It’s supposed to be _over_.

“No,” Merlin says softly after a long silence, like he knows exactly what Eggsy is trying not to do, “No he is not, lad.”

Eggsy dares to sniff and the sharp breath does wonders for his control, cooling the heat of his pain and allowing him to speak in a steady tone. “I haven’t been very fair, have I? God, I’m such an asshole.”

“It’s an unusual situation, even by Kingsman standards,” Merlin allows. “I know you were only trying to do your best by him.”

It makes Eggsy laugh mirthlessly. “Seems my best doesn’t have as much mileage as it used to.”

“Perhaps not,” Merlin admits. “But it’s a testament to your character that you still keep trying.”

There’s a reason for that, Eggsy thinks miserably. Like the waves that used to nip at his heels and chase him ashore when he’d been little and his father had been alive, or the way he couldn’t stop and second guess his footwork while running down the pavement, along the top of garden walls, skating down stair railings or sliding down metal supports to stay one step ahead of Dean’s gang as they chased him across the estate: he knows that if he ever stops, he’ll never be able start again.

 

_____

 

One of Roxy’s many sterling qualities as a Kingsman agent is how relentless she can be, whether it’s to chase down a fleeing suspect or doggedly get to the bottom of a seemingly impossible-to-solve mystery. Unfortunately, sometimes in her single-minded determination, she devoted less time to other—as the end of her marriage and currently strained relationship with her daughters would suggest—aspects of her life, which included, say, little regard for when her co-workers were taking a shower after a spell in the gym ( _not_ overdoing it this time) and who, in thinking they were alone, perhaps were engaged in a routine wank to take care of some other pent up frustrations.

“Here’s our direct connection,” Roxy says, emerging from seemingly _nowhere_.

Eggsy startles so badly, he almost slips on a trail of suds slipping into the drain and adds a cracked skull to his laundry list of injuries. “Jesus, Rox! Ever heard of knocking?”

As it is, he’s got soap in his eyes and is naked as a robin, sporting a lazily coaxed hard-on—his non-dominant hand made coordination tricky—that had immediately begun to soften with the unexpected interruption. Sometimes middle age was a blessing in disguise.

Roxy isn’t having it. “It’s an all-access changing room, Eggs. No one has to knock on account of their coworkers trying to toss one off in a _not at all_ private location, that’s the point.” She waves at him like he's one of her children’s mess of toys left scattered all over the living room. “Anyway, I’ve seen it all before and developed extremely thick scar tissue to deeply traumatising sights. Nothing on, inside of, or what goes into stroke comes out of your body is new to me. So as I was saying….”

“Do we really have to do this right here, right now? Really?” he whines just as Roxy flips the tablet she’s carrying to show him a headshot of a truly unfortunate looking bloke with eyes too close together and a bulbous nose that heavily leaned towards one side of his face.

Eggsy hastily tries to wash away the soap from his face to get a clearer picture. “It’s like someone accidentally smudged his head in utero.”

“Yes, thank you for that.” Roxy barely bats an eye anymore to most of his shit nor does she miss a beat. “His name is Danilo Sankovich, a Serbian national and middleman within Uzelac’s organisation, specialising in explosives.”

“His face looks like an explosion.”

Roxy ignores him with plenty of practise. “He was a member of Corby’s Ukrainian club for a six month overlap with two of our bombers.”

“Alright,” Eggsy says, finally shutting off the spray and grabbing his towel from the nearby heated railing to give his body a brief dry down and then wrap around his waist in a futile effort to preserve his non-existent modesty. “So we find him.”

“Already did,” Roxy says triumphantly in the face of Eggsy’s unimpressed look. Sensible as she always claimed herself to be, even Roxy is not immune to certain sense of drama. “He’s been spotted in Milan at least three times within as many weeks.”

“So he _is_ trying to knock off the backup centre.” Eggsy blows out a puff of air like it could relieve the enormity of the findings.

“It’s looking more and more likely,” Roxy confirms before pulling the tablet back. “We’ve been keeping tabs on who he’s been talking to and increased our monitoring over the site itself.”

“We can’t set ourselves up as possible targets to be recruited, can we?”

She shakes her head. “Not with such a small window. It’s very probable they’re already well along in the process. We’ve been playing catch up this whole time.”

“ _Have_ they been talking to anyone of interest?”

The corner of Roxy’s mouth tightens. A sure tell with her. “No one we’ve picked up on yet.”

Which really meant there was someone, but Kingsman just didn’t know who. “And the LSE continuity process? How much longer will that take?”

“I don’t know,” Roxy admits. “You’d think it wouldn’t be long with digital, right? Then again, it _is_ decades worth of historical data.”

“Haven’t a clue. Do I look like a stockbroker to you?”

Roxy smirks, intentionally dragging her gaze down the lines of his body, towel and all. “Well….”

“Quiet, you.” He can’t help smiling anyways as he moves to his locker to struggle into his clothes. As frustrating as this mission is and how much they’ve had to run to stand still, he’s grateful Roxy still allowed him to have a part in it, almost certainly done as a favour to him rather than out of any need for additional help. “So if Picasso Face is in fair Italia, why aren’t you there feasting on mountains of pasta and drowning in glasses of fine wine right now?”

“I’ve been told not to stray too far for the time being,” Roxy says, grimacing. “Not with my candidate in the final rounds.”

“Has Merlin said something about it to you?” Eggsy asks, having particular trouble with his shirt. His cast is thankfully waterproof and fairly lightweight compared to the behemoth plaster casings decades ago, but it still made getting a button down on a pain in the arse. “He’s been cheerful these past few days and that terrifies me.”

Roxy takes pity and helps him out, smoothing the fabric down over his chest and then setting about to the buttons like she were helping him dress up before his first school disco. “I know as much as you.”

“I didn’t think there was anything worse than that dog test, but if there’s anyone who actively enjoys proving me wrong….”

“You know those tests exist for very good reason,” Roxy says in nearly the same intonation as Merlin that Eggsy almost checks to see if he’s about with some sort of speech controller. “Although I do admit it’s been tedious. Merlin has me doing milk runs around the city while I’m here.”

“So, digging through bins and monitoring POIs watching tepid porn on their lunch breaks in the park, here I come,” he mutters, knowing whatever Roxy has been assigned, he could expect at least thrice as much. In all honesty, he’s surprised he hasn’t been assigned to any already given how Merlin was a strict adherent to the belief in idle hands and devil’s playthings. “Huzzah.”

Roxy smiles at him and sympathetically pats his arm, which is just about the best he can hope for these days. “Tilde really just raises the bar on all fronts, doesn’t she?”

“More like on all fours.” He winks, earning another light smack, right on his nipple, _ow_.

 

_____

 

“Here is the schedule of all the drops you need to make, primarily on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Merlin says, heedless to Eggsy’s dismay as more windows pop open on Eggsy’s tablet screen. “And here is the list of people we need intel on. Their day-to-day schedules are attached.” More windows, Jesus, it’s worse than an actual porn site. 

“Such a glamourous life we lead,” Eggsy says, staring morosely at his, for all intents and purposes, _busywork_. “I’m getting my cast off next week. Soon, I’ll even be able to—”

“And here is the list of informants we need to check in on.” Another window appears. “Careful of Number Three. She likes young, pretty faces and likes to pinch bottoms.”

Eggsy tilts his head bats his eyelashes. “You think I’m pretty, Merlin?”

“She’s a hundred and two. I’m considered young and pretty to her. Her fingers have turned into gnarly pincers.”

“Ah.” So much for getting another opportunity to apply the Unwin charm.

“Isn’t it nice to have a quiet moment for once?” Apparently now finished offloading his most odious tasks onto his minions, Merlin sighs and beams up at Eggsy.

“Yeah, you really got that R&R thing down,” Eggsy says, giving up on trying to close all the bloody files Merlin remotely opened on his screen after the fifteenth exasperated swipe. “Do we really need to know what a...what was it, an _all-raw diet_ _lifestyle blogger_ eats for supper?”

“We do when that blogger is suspected of smuggling stolen goods across borders,” Merlin says without missing a beat.

“I know what you’re doing.”

“Do you now.”

“You’re trying to keep me busy so I won’t think about everything else going on.”

“I’m really not,” Merlin says. “The work was piling up, and I rarely get to have this many agents in London for so long. It almost makes this round of trials worth it.”

Merlin could win a staring contest with a corpse, but Eggsy’s known him for years now. This is his own way of showing he cares. “Deny it all you want,” Eggsy says as he stands up to leave, magnanimously leaving Merlin to his illusion as a cold, distant, emotionally absent curmudgeon. “But thank you, all the same.”

“Please go away.”

 

_____

 

So he may have been too hasty in his gratitude towards Merlin. Not after three long, tedious days of thrilling activities such as:

  1. Sifting through rubbish from five different residences, encountering all manner of cold, congealing substances (food and otherwise) and learning more than he ever wanted to know about the people who produced it. Someone in the Harding family had a bit of a drink problem, likely Mrs Harding if the sheer number of rosé bottles were anything by which to judge. The Thorntons had an impulse buying addiction with a special fondness for single-purpose kitchen gadgets. The Dunaways loved their dog to the point of obsession and had frankly unbelievable amounts of sex, but Eggsy isn’t entirely sure it’s with each other.
  2. Picking up and dropping off scraps of indecipherable nonsense in ridiculous places all over fucking London from Merlin’s active and extensive network of informants, because CCTV just isn’t enough. Eggsy has had to feel along the bottoms of gum-covered park benches, break his nails in scrabbling along brick walls to find the loose one, and trading ridiculous coded phrases with a dodgy assortment of characters for messages he can’t even understand. “It’s for security purposes,” Merlin assures. “You’re just the messenger in this situation. You don’t have clearance to know what’s going on, so shut up and do your job.”
  3. Having conversations with Mrs Masterson, the aforementioned centenarian who made terrible tea and insisted Eggsy sit and talk with her for two bloody hours while she babbled about the feral cats in her neighbourhood and how loud her neighbours were while sneaking hard pinches to Eggsy’s bum every time she asked him to fetch things she most certainly did not need. His arse now sported several bruised smudges thanks to those old talons.



Suffice to say, Eggsy has just about had it. He knew being a spy didn’t always entail thrilling heroics and that, indeed, much of it involved mind-numbing footwork, but he had a growing suspicion that much of what he’d been made to do these past few days was Merlin having a laugh, and if indeed this had been his offhand way of helping Eggsy out through a rough time, he really could have, say, ordered Eggsy to the Azores instead.

As soon as he returns to Kingsman HQ, he tries to track Merlin down to not only dump his pile of collected paper scraps (hopefully right in his tea) but to also give him a piece of his mind. Except, Merlin isn’t even in his customary station, and no one can tell him where he’s gone. Bloody typical.

He’s in the middle of crossing the grounds for the obstacle course when he sees them: Roxy and Arthur just a little ways ahead, walking side by side in a casual manner that would have suggested a nice, if chilly, stroll between two people who were maybe a bit more familiar with each other than simply boss and employee, but everyone at Kingsman knew Arthur had been Roxy’s sponsor; such a sight wouldn’t have set off any wagging tongues. If Eggsy hadn’t known those two had been nasty with each other, he’d never have suspected anything now.

And now it just seems so obvious.

They walk closely together. Not overly intimate, but enough to occasionally brush shoulders and hands too many times to be merely incidental. Roxy certainly isn’t shouting at Arthur that his hands are too sweaty and he needs to step off like she does with Eggsy.

And there’s a tenderness to Roxy’s face he’s only seen a handful of times: back when her daughters were younger and more generous with their love, the very early days of her marriage, when Eggsy had woken up after a few uncomfortably close calls. It’s tough work to earn that face, but she gives it all freely to Arthur now.

And Arthur? Well. Arthur could still get it, Eggsy decides. He has a full head of hair, still mostly dark, but with that distinguished silver temple thing going on that made people swoon. His body is still fit despite not being out in the field anymore. His face is relatively unlined in a way Eggsy could only envy. Merlin says it’s because Arthur rarely ever moved his face to express any emotions whatsoever, but he said it only after looking for and failing to find any invoices for Botox.

Arthur’s anything but stone faced now. Smiling freely at Roxy, laughing so uninhibitedly that he looks like a whole different person. Looking back at her just as tenderly, leaning ever so slightly into her space with yearning.

Huh.

Forgetting about his original intentions, Eggsy finds himself following them as they move through the woods, and then it becomes a bit of a game: how to track two experienced spies without them knowing.

The woods aren’t an ideal setting to tail anyone this closely in a pair of oxfords, and he’s never been much of a tracker—too many twigs to accidentally snap and dead leaves to rustle up underfoot—but either Eggsy is better at this than he thought or Roxy and Arthur are a little too wrapped up in each other to pay much attention to any aberrations in their surroundings. Soon enough, Eggsy finds himself paralleling their trajectory, and then even gets out ahead of them.

Which is all well and good, until he runs out of wood to hide in when the path winds itself into open rolling pasture.

He can hear them coming, just about to make the turn. _Shit_.

There’s a small shed nearby used for storing some of the groundskeeping equipment, and the padlock is miraculously off the door. Eggsy darts in, peeking through the shed’s small grimy window as they come into view.

Only, instead of walking past and continuing on their way as expected, they head straight for him.

 _Oh no_. “Fuck, fuck, fuck...”

Eggsy quickly slips beneath a tarp draped over what looks to be some sort of cart and tries to breathe in the engine-scented air shallowly as the door opens.

“Ah, here we are…” he hears Roxy say in a teasing tone he’s never heard her use before. “Oh my, it looks like the groundskeeper isn’t in as we thought. Whatever shall we do now after walking all this way?”

“Hmm, I suppose I had better make the trip worth your while after you were so gracious to accompany me.”

“I was, wasn’t I? I accept cash, credit, and sexual favours.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have my wallet on me.” Arthur hardly sounds apologetic about it though.

“Sexual favours it is,” Roxy says huskily, a voice that will haunt Eggsy’s nightmares forever. “Come here.”

And then there’s the sound of soft laughter and wet smacking and heavier breathing, all growing more heated and transforming into low, passionate moans that are at once horrifically arousing and extremely grisly. It’s not going to stop for awhile, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and Eggsy _cannot be here for this_.

Abruptly, he throws back the tarp and stands up.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Roxy screams.

Under any other circumstance, it’d be comical to witness his boss and his best mate spring back from each other like repulsed magnets, hair mussed, faces flushed, and clothes half off. Arthur’s shirt is pulled out from his trousers and half unbuttoned, tie all by hanging limply from his neck. Roxy’s shirt’s been buttoned down low enough to reveal her rather pretty pink demi-cup bra.

Right now, though, Eggsy’s just as mortified as them. “Er, hullo. I didn’t think you’d want me to be here for the next bit.”

“Eggsy, what the _fuck_ are you doing here?” Roxy asks, buttoning up her blouse while Arthur hastily tries to readjust this loosened tie, of all things.

“I was just out for a walk!” he tries to defend. “I wasn’t following you, I swear!”

Neither looks like they’re buying it.

Dropping the act, he turns to Roxy. “First the conference room, now a dirty old shed? Bloody hell, Rox, do you get off on fucking in weird places or something?”

“Galahad, I think you had better leave now,” Arthur suggests in a mild-mannered way that is actually terrifying because his eyes are steely and murderous.

“Right. I’ll just be going then!” he declares brightly, sliding quickly past them and ducking out the door before they change their minds and decide to bury his body beneath the floorboards.

He runs back to the mansion like dogs are chasing him, heart pounding in his ears, feeling both exhilarated and anxious about his next confrontation with either of them. It’s both a gift and a curse. Already he’s thought up _so many one-liners_.

So involved is he in his semi-evil, gleeful plans that he doesn’t even really pay much mind to where he’s tearing through, or to whom he may encounter: he nearly barrels right into Victor, who’s emerging from the mansion wearing civilian clothing and not his boiler suit, Marmite poking his little bulbous rodent head from between the open flaps of his coat.

Buoyant mood all but evapourated, Eggsy backs up a couple steps and Victor mirrors his action like they’re two skittish horses. “Ah. Hullo.”

It’s a bit disheartening to see how Victor can’t quite meet his eyes. “Hello.”

It hits Eggsy all of a sudden—Victor in his civvies—what this could be, and a wave of panic overwhelms him. “You’re not...you’re not leaving, are you?”

“What?”

It all comes out in a barely comprehensible rush: “I know what transpired was... _unfortunate_ , and I owe you the world’s biggest apology for all of it. I really am truly sorry, Victor. I didn’t mean to place any unfair assumptions or comparisons on you. It may...alright, I admit that there was a small part of me that had thought...I don’t know what I thought. That there had to be a connection, maybe. But I _know_ , Victor, I know you’re not Harry. I’ve known it for a long time now. Your achievements here have all been your own. _You_ did that. Which is why, despite what an absolute shit I’ve been, I don’t think you ought to quit now. You’ll make an incredible Kingsman agent, all on your own. And we need that, the _world_ needs that. Please don’t let something wretched that I did affect your future.”

He all but begs by the end of it, and Victor finally stares at him, seemingly paralysed to the spot, a tight pinched look set across his face.

With a sinking feeling, Eggsy quietly adds, “Or, if you really can’t stand the sight of me after all, I can respect that. Even...even understand it. I’ll help set you up with something, if you wish. You’ll be taken care of, no strings attached. You won’t ever have to see me again.”

“I wouldn’t need your help even if I wanted it,” Victor says tightly, and it takes everything within Eggsy’s control not to flinch from the bitter tone. “My family is wealthy and incredibly connected. I could have any job I wanted.”

“Right...of course,” Eggsy whispers, chastened.

“But I’m not quitting,” Victor says, causing Eggsy to look up from where his gaze had centred upon the toes of his oxfords. “I want this too much. And not...it has nothing to do with you.” There a beat of silence that Eggsy’s mind already fills in with _anymore_. “This is the first thing I’ve done in my life that’s been...gratifying. I don’t want to give that up.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Eggsy says, smiling a little in relief. “Truly.”

There’s still nothing soft about Victor now. If anything, he seems to pull back further, an almost tangible retreat that hits Eggsy like a sucking chest wound. “I’ve got to go. We’re not supposed to even be talking, and I’d like for it to remain that way.”

Eggsy studies him, easy to do when Victor still won’t look at him. There’s something taller and broader about him now that Eggsy can’t quite put a finger on. Something more established, more settled, a few more lines filled in. Eggsy almost wants to get out a tape measure to see if there’s been any actual physical change (of course there has been, what with the brutal training regimen all the recruits had to take on). He wants to fall to his knees and beg for Victor to forgive him. To forget his inadequacies. To have them go back to being what they’d been before, when Victor still looked at him with adoration and Eggsy just...Eggsy just dreamed. Dreamed and hoped.

But Victor’s moved well beyond his reach now and it shows in every cell and fibre of his being. He’s a closed book, a wall, and Eggsy can spend a lifetime beating his fists upon it, begging to be let back in, or he can choose the better part of valour and let go.

There used to be a younger, less sad version of him that would have easily and unthinkingly chosen the first option. Simple. You didn’t give up on things like this, not ever. Not the things that are worth fighting for.

Older him, him of the present, knows better. Older him knows that as long as you are alive, you always have something left to lose and the hardest thing in the world isn’t necessarily failure. It’s what comes after.

So he just nods, once, short and swift, definitive, like drawing a line beneath it all.

“Alright. Then I wish you all the best luck for whatever comes next,” he says, taking another figurative and literal step back from the young man who looks too much like a lost love, and another person Eggsy has failed.

 

_____

 

One good thing about all the repetitive busywork Merlin’s dealt out is that it makes the days go by in a haze that requires little thought or attention. Collect messages. Drop them off. Even all the desultory exchanges he must carry on with strangers—just nod and agree, make a quip, pretend to give a shit, flash them his trademark smile and wink. He knows he’s been blessed with a natural born charm that’s got him out of many a sticky situation.

And Eggsy is tired of thinking. He’s _exhausted_. He’s always been better with simply _doing_ anyway.

Normally, he looks forward to Sunday dinners with his mother because he so rarely gets to attend them, and the one blessing stemming from this latest injury is that he’s been able to be present for so many of them in a row. But with Daisy, who had chosen a bloody perfect time to start heeding his words by now occupying a rarely filled seat at the table and carrying with her all their baggage, unspoken and otherwise, Eggsy finds his enthusiasm a bit dampened.

“Isn’t it nice to have me two babes under the same roof again?” Michelle enthuses. Maybe a bit too energetically, like she can sense the mounting tension in the room. “Look at us being a family.”

“It’s nice, Mum,” Daisy says with a faint smile and a pointed look in Eggsy’s direction.

Eggsy averts his eyes, finding himself unable to meet Daisy’s gaze for more than an accidental glimpse. “Yeah.”

It’s just them today. Roxy had begged off, despite Eggsy’s pleading, claiming she didn’t want to further expose Michelle to her little disgruntled monsters, even though Izzy and Ros’s brand of petulance would have been extremely welcome right about now. Eggsy partly suspects Roxy also wants to get back at him for the shed cockblock.

The buzzer in the kitchen goes off with divine timing, deflating the air of its portentousness, and Michelle rushes off to the kitchen, leaving them alone.

He can feel the weight of Daisy’s glare. “So, what, are we just never going to speak to each again?”

“Sounds good to me,” Eggsy says.

“God, Eggsy,” Daisy spits out in disgust. “How are you still this immature?”

“ _I’m_ immature?” Eggsy says, the heat of his resentment bubbling up to the surface where it had apparently only been lying in wait for this very moment. “ _You’re_ ungrateful!”

“I never said I wasn’t thankful for all you did,” Daisy defends. “I know of at least some the sacrifices you’ve had to make. I know it wasn’t easy.”

“And yet you’ve still made it perfectly clear that all I’ve done ain’t been good enough. _I’ll_ never be good enough. Just your big dumb brother who ain’t smart enough to go to uni, is it?”

“That’s not what I think! Not at all!” Daisy says, staring at Eggsy in shock. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done for us, Eggs. I could never repay you in a million years. You used to be my hero.”

 _Used to be_.

Before Eggsy can respond, Michelle returns with the main dish, steaming and smelling...off. Decidedly unmeaty. And then she sets the platter on the table and it’s...Eggsy doesn’t know what it is. A brownish, greyish textureless lump made from substances he can’t readily identify.

“...what is this?” he asks, confused.

“It’s called Foast! Get it? A faux roast, innit?” Michelle says, biting her lower lip, eyes gleaming in the way they do when she’s too over eager to please. “It’s a hundred percent vegetarian! For Daisy, love! Now we can all eat together!”

“Thanks, Mum,” Daisy says. “Very kind of you.”

“Anything for you, babe.” Michelle beams. “Eggsy, wanna carve us up now that your cast’s off?”

“Are you sure it’s edible?” Eggsy asks dubiously, taking the prongs and knife from his mother and giving the lump a tentative prod. “Or native to Earth?”

Michelle gives him a swat. “A little less meat ain’t gonna kill you, love. Macca taught me that.”

“No, but this stuff might,” Eggsy mutters. It does feel good to be able to move his arm around though. The muscles around the elbow are a bit weak, and the joint is more than a bit stiff, but Eggsy knows PT will go a long way towards ameliorating those effects. Soon, it would become just another throbbing ache on rainy days.

Turns out, though, he doesn’t need much strength to slice through the faux roast. Eggsy’s knife goes through the lump like warm butter. It’s just _wrong_.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t taste much better. It has the consistency of congealed tinned pâté and tastes like lightly seasoned cardboard. It sticks to the roof of his mouth and around his teeth. He’d would rather eat those bugs again in the Amazon, which at least had a nutty flavour.

Glancing around the quiet table where the only sounds being made are the scrapes of cutlery against plates, he can see his opinion isn’t exclusive. Michelle grimaces but then tries to turn it into an encouraging smile. Daisy somehow manages to cut her slice into the smallest morsels possible before unenthusiastically popping them into her mouth. He’s seen anorexics to eat with more relish.

Eggsy pours himself an extra generous glass of wine and washes the dreadful taste from his mouth. “I’m sorry, Dais—and sorry, Mum, it has nothing to do with your cooking skills—but this is absolutely the worst shit.”

Daisy snorts, and then starts laughing.

Michelle exhales in relief. “Oh thank God, I ain’t the only one.” Her eyes widen and she quickly turns to Daisy. “I mean, I love you and support your decisions, love. I really do, but….”

“Mum, it’s fine,” Daisy cuts in, forestalling any more placating. “Eggsy’s right. This is disgusting. Most vegetarian meat substitutes are, honestly.” She sighs dejectedly. “God, I miss meat so much.”

“Well,” Michelle declares as she sets down her fork and knife. “How’s about I order us some Chinese?”

Later, after Daisy’s gone home saying she’s got to be up early for an exam tomorrow (it’s only a little less uneasy this time, but the parting look Daisy gives him says their conversation is far from over), Eggsy helps Michelle put away the leftover cartons in the refrigerator and offers to dry while she washes. By mutual unspoken agreement, they finish off the remaining bottle of red despite it having not been opened.

Eggsy can see her reflection in the windows over the sink and can’t help but think his mum is still so lovely, blond hair intermixing with silver threads that she refuses to cut short, still those big, striking blue eyes that are always so kind. One wouldn’t know from looking at her how much hardship she’s had to endure, how it can harden and age a person but has only ever made her even more beautiful.

She looks up and catches Eggsy looking, smiling self-consciously. “What?”

Eggsy just shakes his head and goes back to drying the knives. “Nothing.”

“No, what?” Michelle prompts.

In response, Eggsy just leans across the sink and kisses her temple. “You’re still me favourite mum, you know that, right?”

Michelle’s eyes soften. “My, my, ain’t we nostalgic tonight.”

“It’s just that...I’ve let you down. So much. And you never stopped loving me, you know?”

“Babe.” Michelle’s brows furrow in concern. “You okay? Maybe that Foast _was_ poisoned.”

Eggsy just comes out with it. “Have I been a bad son? Have I disappointed you?”

“What?” Michelle asks, shocked, clearly not expecting this conversation to go in the direction it has.

“I’m never here. I’ve missed so much of Daisy’s life, _your_ life, Yumi’s.... Birthdays, Christmases, Mother’s day, Dad’s…” Eggsy closes his eyes for a moment. “You don’t hate me for it though. Everyone else got sick of my shit a long time ago, but you’ve always just accepted it, like it was alright. Why?”

“Eggsy.” She shuts off the tap and dries her hands on a dish towel before turning to him. “I’m your mum. I’m always gonna love you, no matter what.” Michelle’s tone is no-nonsense now.

“But I’ve put work above family. I’ve just thrown money at everything, thinking that would make up for never being there,” Eggsy persists, not even knowing why he’s got to drive the nail in, like he wants to force Michelle to admit she’s just as disappointed in him as everyone else.

“You took care of us. You stepped up when I didn’t. When I should have done,” Michelle still insists before she looks torn for a moment, and Eggsy thinks she’ll finally cop to it, but what she says next shocks him instead.

“I know you ain’t no tailor, babe.”

Eggsy blinks at her, slack-jawed.

“No tailor’s gonna be gone that much, no matter how much hot shit he is. And no tailor makes this much money so fast, enough to buy us our own house in London and then have one for himself.” Michelle smiles faintly. “And no tailor comes home with that many injuries. You gone done what Lee did, didn’t you?”

“You...you never said anything,” Eggsy says once he's recovered enough to speak.

Michelle shrugs. “Figured if you wanted to tell me, you would. But first time I saw you after V-Day, baby, you was all grown up. You became your own man. Who was I to stop that? At some point, every mum’s got to just let their children be and pray for the best. I’m so lucky and so proud my boy turned into such a great man.”

“Everything’s just a bit shit right now, Mum,” Eggsy croaks, feeling like he’s crumbling in the face of her warm, unconditional understanding. “Don’t feel like there’s anything great about me at all.”

Wordlessly, Michelle pulls him down into an embrace, and Eggsy sinks into her warm arms, breathing in the light scent of her floral perfume and brushing his cheek against the soft, old folds along her neck. He may be a forty-year-old man now, but mother’s hugs could still reduce him to a crying little boy again, every time

“You know, I used to look at you and see your dad. It hurt me, back when the pain was fresh as snow. Hard to bear it very well, and I didn’t do it so good, did I?” his mum whispers into his hair, a soothing cadence of soft words that remind him of the nights when he’d wake up terrified from some nightmare in the middle of the night and she’d rush in and hold him until dawn. “But now, Eggsy, I look at you and see all the best parts of Lee and myself. You been through some shit before, remember? Important thing is, you got through it and you did even better.”

“I dunno if I can this time, Mum. Kinda crept up on me and it got too big.”

“You always do. I got no doubt you gonna do the same here. It’s who you are,” his mum says with unshakable, resolute faith, and even Eggsy has to admit, it’s inspiring as much as it is comforting, like he can do anything in the world in her eyes.

Nice to know there’s still one pillar that hasn’t been toppled.

 

_____

 

Harry’s portrait isn’t the newest painting in the mansion. It hadn’t even been commissioned while he’d been alive, his likeness assembled from various photographs and recordings until they came together to form a stiff, formal pose in a way he had never inhabited while living. It didn’t capture the impish slink to Harry’s poise even when his spine could be very straight indeed and his manners impeccable. His painted eyes were very dark, very sober, devoid of the glint of amusement that had often lurked within them, the kindness when they looked upon Eggsy himself. A small brass mounted plaque below the painting reads like a joke: _Galahad VI_. All that’s missing, really, is the toilet the painting ought to be hung over.

In spite of all its failings, Eggsy frequently finds himself in the northeast wing gazing upon it anyway like it’s the very last connection to his predecessor he has. Sure, he could pull up any number of old recordings, but it isn’t the same. There’s something solemn and peaceful about the pilgrimage of pouring a very full glass of scotch, meandering through the empty halls and ending up here like a happy accident.

He hasn’t stooped so low as to actually talk to the portrait yet. But he’s been known to stand and then sit against the opposite wall facing the portrait for hours, lost in silent contemplation.

It’s how Roxy finds him now, her steps quiet and light but making no obvious effort to be masked. She doesn’t even speak as she stops beside him, her profile barely seen from his periphery as she gazes upon Harry’s portrait along with him.

“Do you think the attraction back then was mutual?” Roxy suddenly asks.

Eggsy blinks at the non-sequitur. “Pardon?”

Roxy remains undeterred. She’s very good at asking direct, unflinching questions of him. An excellent interrogator, even. “Do you think Harry could have returned your feelings? Did you ever get a sense of that?”

“I liked to think so. The way he looked at me, had that dark, smouldering eye thing going on. He was always making somewhat off-colour remarks, though come to find out, they weren’t limited to me.” Eggsy had rewatched Harry’s recordings enough times to practically memorise them, but he was still no closer to understanding how Harry really thought and felt about those things for which he always had a witty rejoinder. “To be brutally honest, I simply don’t know. I know we got on well. That he felt he owed me a significant debt because of my father, and that maybe our big row at the end had more to do with him than me.” It still smarted though. He tries not to think about that day too deeply (something that got easier with time and the softened edges of memory), even if he logically knows, yes, Harry really would have been proud to see what he’s become. Mostly. Well, professionally if maybe not personally. “It was so long ago now, Rox. Any memory I have is bound to be distorted.”

“It’s become encased in stone, hasn’t it? That one moment taking on a sort of monumental importance it really shouldn’t have. It’s just that sometimes I wonder if you ever really moved on from it,” Roxy says, delivering an easy blow not unlike puncturing his lungs with a letter opener (because Kingsman is still old fashioned enough to have things like that lying around its fussy old rooms). “That, and then this job. It’s all hardened you. You’re emotionally degenerate.”

“Look who’s talking,” Eggsy says softly.

Roxy cedes to the comment by tipping her head in acknowledgement and then resting it fully on his shoulder like she can no longer hold it up. “We tried, though, didn’t we?”

“That we did.”

“Do you think it still counts?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not to the people we want it to. But I hope so.”

“Arthur wants to go about this properly. He wants us to be official.” Roxy always likes to make bombshell announcements the way one would read off football scores. “He thinks moments like what happened with you will keep on happening with others the longer this goes on.”

“Arthur, you sly old dog,” Eggsy says, then turns serious. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know. We have a really good thing going on now. It’s easy. Makes me feel good when so much doesn’t. I just don’t want to mess that up with a relationship I’m going to inevitably fuck up.” Roxy sighs. “And he’s very much an until-death-do-you-part type. He was in a long-term relationship with my predecessor, you know. Now there’s some vaguely incestuous, sexual psychodrama for you.”

“It’s supposed to be easier between two spies, don’t you think? You both understand the stakes. No need for lies or keeping secrets. Those things pretty much killed our marriages.”

“But I’m also divorced with two kids who aren’t very likable right now. And he’s my boss. This job is immensely stressful. I’m very likely to die on him, and I don’t want to put him through that again.”

“Isn’t that an argument to make the most of what time you’ve got left? You’re going to put him through the wringer anyway, whether you pursue the relationship or not,” Eggsy points out. “Because he obviously cares for you. Dare I say...love?”

“Love,” Roxy repeats a little uneasily, like the very thought had never occurred to her.

“Yeah. You should have seen yourselves walking along. Followed you for a good while. It was disgusting,” Eggsy tells her.

“I knew you’d been following us, you little pervert,” Roxy says, narrowing her eyes.

“I’ve got to live vicariously through someone’s happiness here.” Eggsy shrugs. He can’t even summon up the energy to be apologetic. “So, you know. No risk, no reward, right? Arthur’s not your ex, and you’re a lot wiser now. You do deserve to be happy, Rox.”

“You’re supposed to be discouraging me from this so we can grow old and be miserable together,” Roxy almost whines. “When did you suddenly grow up on me?”

Eggsy huffs out a laugh. These women. “One step forward, two steps back, probably.” He nods to the portrait. “Case in point.”

Roxy smiles a bit. “You deserve to be happy too, you know.”

He’d like for that to be true. He really would. “Working on it.”

 

_____

 

“Galahad,” Cat calls him out just as he’s finishing up intel collection for the day down by the South Bank.

“Cat, love of my life, it’s been too long since I heard your dulcet tones,” Eggsy says as he dodges a herd of slow-moving tourists surrounding an acrobatic street performer. He’s only about half-joking. He can’t wait to go on missions again.

“It’s been a vacation for this one,” Cat says. “Merlin wants to see you when you get back. How’s the arm?”

“Almost as good as new.” He glances down and bends the arm in question a few times just so she can see. “Soon I’ll be able to continue sweeping you off your feet.”

“Continue? That would imply you ever had.”

“You wound me, Cat.”

Still, he puts a bit of speed in his haste to get back to headquarters, feeling like a change is in the air. He’s been grudgingly signed off for light duty now by his physicians. He won’t even try to push himself. Or, well, he won’t try to push himself too much. Christ, he’d be content to be assigned to Wales for a spell if it meant not having to endure Mrs Masterson’s bum pinches anymore.

But when he opens the door to Merlin’s private office without knocking, he encounters not just Merlin, but Victor as well.

And Victor’s aiming a gun right at him with a deadly serious look in his eye.

Perhaps he had underestimated just how angry he really was.

Eggsy instinctively raises his hands, gaze drawn first to the end of the barrel, then over it to meet Victor’s face. “What are you doing, Victor?” When Victor only presses his lips together, he glances at Merlin, questioning. “Merlin?”

And that’s when he sees: all the bits and scraps of paper laid out along Merlin’s desk, but this time accompanied with decoded translations listing dates and times and dodgy sorts of messages that sound vaguely malicious. There’s also photos—several of them—of _him_ out on his milk runs, in the crowds, meeting with informants, passing information along: times and names and places and bank account numbers. They’ve all been shot covertly from a distance if the graininess is any indication. Eggsy hadn’t even know he’d been followed.

It looks like...well, it looks rather bad out of context, doesn’t it?

“I’ve informed Victor there’s been a mole at Kingsman for some time now who has been selling sensitive data,” Merlin says, devoid of all sentiment. “Seeing as how there were few people that could be trusted under the given circumstances, I’ve asked him to help me find out who it was. I’m afraid it’s led us here.”

Eggsy’s mind goes blank for a few moments, dissociating from his body, and the situation takes on a surreal quality. Merlin looks at him with such certainty, it makes him even question himself: _Am I_ a traitor?

And then reason catches back up with him in a rush. Holy shit, he’s been _set up_. “Oh, you bastard,” he breathes, glaring at Merlin. But _why_?

And then he starts laughing a little hysterically, because _Jesus_.

“Victor,” Merlin says. “The price of treason at Kingsman is immediate execution. Shoot him.”

That shuts Eggsy up right quick. He’s wearing his Kingsman suit. Surely, Merlin doesn’t think a bullet will do much to….

Oh.

The dog test.

He’s the dog.

 _That prick_.

But they’ve got a test to get through first. Eggsy clenches his jaw, nostrils flaring defiantly, as turns back to Victor, looking him straight in the eye. “Do you what you have to do.”

The first light of uncertainty creeps into Victor’s gaze. His hands shake just slightly, a small tremour almost to be missed.

 _Do it_ , Eggsy silently wills him. _Come on_. _Shoot me_.

 _Shoot me_.

For a moment, Eggsy thinks everything will be okay. Victor sets his shoulders and braces himself, doing what needs to be done, because he wants to be a Kingsman agent more than anything right now.

Then he sees it before it happens, something like lightning maybe, hitting Victor all at once. Victor’s eyes widen, his whole body seizes up, and then he’s dropping the gun, where it clatters to the ground and thankfully doesn’t go off.

Eggsy starts forward. “Are you—”

“No.” Victor clutches his head like it’s about to split open, letting out a pained groan before hissing and clenching his teeth to keep any more sounds from seeping out. “I can’t do this.”

And then he turns and runs out of the room before anyone can say anything more, leaving Eggsy and Merlin to stare after him in disbelief.

Finally, Merlin raises a brow, but Eggsy can see how the corners of his mouth dip further in disappointment. “Well. That’s that then.”

That can’t be all. It _can’t_.

“No,” Eggsy says, shaking his head. “No. There’s something wrong.”

“He failed the test, Eggsy.”

“And just what sort of fucking test is that?” Eggsy rounds on him, fury and building resentment cresting within him all at once. “You framed me! You made me suffer that old bat’s pincers for nothing!”

“We have to know, Galahad,” Merlin says coolly. “The others are going through the exact same test. We’ll see where we end up after.”

“No, there’s something else going on,” Eggsy insists. “I know it, I’ve got to…this isn’t over!”

“Eggsy….”

Eggsy ignores him as he leaves, trying to guess where Victor would have gone. There’s no trace of him in the hall, nothing amiss.

But then he recalls where Victor had always gone when he’d been distressed.

His office door hasn’t been closed all the way. Eggsy slowly approaches it like a pressure-sensitive trap and gently nudges it open. “Victor?”

It’s dark in the room, the only light coming from the outdoor lamps leaking in through the windows, barely limning the edges of the furniture. Eggsy doesn’t move to switch on the lights. “Victor?”

Something stirs in the shadows, on the floor beside the leather couch. Once Eggsy’s eyes grow accustomed to the lower levels of light, he can make out Victor’s body, hunched up into a ball, face hidden in his arms.

Slowly, Eggsy approaches and sinks down to his knees before him like he’s a feral animal. “Victor, please tell me what’s wrong. I’m not mad. I’m not. It was just a test. I’m not actually a traitor. It was just another test. You could have shot me. It would have been a blank, and even if it hadn’t been, Kingsman suits are bulletproof. It was just to see...to see….”

“I knew it was fake!” Victor says, voice muffled. “I knew.”

“Then why...why didn’t you….?”

At long last, Victor lifts his head and raises his red-rimmed, glassy eyes to Eggsy, but it’s like he isn’t seeing him. Like Eggsy isn’t even there.

“Because it was supposed to be my dog, not you.”

Eggsy reels back, falling right on his arse to the floor, breath knocked out of him.

Victor just stares at him, haunted. No, not Victor. Not quite anymore. Eggsy can’t breathe.

“And you didn’t shoot yours, did you? We fought over it. It was the last thing I ever said to you before I walked out. Before I died. I died. And the last thing I remember, the last thing, all I could think was...I said I’d come back. _I was supposed to come back._ ”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think I'd have this up today, but hey, look at that. My god, though, this one is so _talky_.

In a spartan, grey, claustrophobic room furnished with only a heavy steel table and two chairs for maximum psychological fuckery, Merlin and Victor sit across from each other like chess opponents, sans board, but the air is still leaden with the near-tangible weight of its mental warfare.

“Tell me about Harry Hart’s mission in November of 1995.”

Merlin usually takes to the part of the interrogator as naturally as a duck to water, able to maintain an unshakable facade of cool distance, but something’s off here now. There’s a barely constrained fervour in his hard, glittering eyes, a kind of cold, blue-flamed fury that is at once terrifying and deeply concerning.

But Victor’s been through the emotional wringer today, extra decades of a harrowing life appended to his memories like stones in his pockets. There’s probably very little that could upset him more than he already has been, and in that wild tempest, he’s found a sort of hollow calm. He regards Merlin steadily, bloodshot eyes staring out, unblinking, from a wan face. “I don’t know. Tell me what month and year you realised your hair was thinning.”

Merlin’s jaw tightens just ever so slightly.

In a small antechamber on the other side of the glass, Eggsy sighs and restrains himself from simply banging his forehead repeatedly against it.

“Well,” Arthur says next to him. “He certainly seems in full possession of Harry’s effortless charm.”

Lighthearted remark though it may be, it does little to alleviate the anxiousness curdling in Eggsy’s stomach ever since Victor—no, _Harry_ —looked back at him in petrified shock and dread.

After all those months of doubt and longing and reawakened stages of fucking grief, Eggsy had known it in that instant with deep and abiding certainty. This is Harry. _His Harry_.

But convincing others of the same would be a whole different story.

“You’d do well to take this seriously,” Merlin continues, heedless of the hidden peanut gallery, though both he and Victor know in Kingsman, someone was always watching. “You’re making some very serious claims. For all we know, you could a be plant from another organisation sent to spy on us all.”

“It’s been over forty years, Merlin,” Victor says with faint exasperation. “You couldn’t tell me what you had for breakfast last week and yet you expect me to be able to recall one specific mission out of hundreds a lifetime ago?”

“How convenient for you then.”

Something shudders in Victor’s gaze, eyes gone dim in a way that makes Eggsy’s heart ache. It’s a look that’s too close to the one permanently branded into his memories, and probably his entire psyche. _Can’t you see everything I’ve done has been about trying to repay him?_

“The dog you picked was a Pointer you named Barnett.” It’s not a question, but it doesn’t quite feel like a fact either. Victor speaks like he’s trying to recount a dream, with softened edges and musing, feeling out an uncertain reality through words. “When he got off his leash and was hit by that car, it was one of the few times you ever let anyone see you cry. We got pissed together for the first time shortly thereafter. I didn’t really like you much before then, but after...after it was alright, because I knew you could feel pain like the rest of us mere mortals.”

Merlin doesn’t respond. He could be a statue for how still he’s gone, staring at Victor with unnerving intensity. Were it not for the way his knuckles have gone white around his tablet, Eggsy couldn’t have been sure he heard Victor at all.

“I can’t...I can’t recall every mission. Or even specific details. But there are...there were ones that left an impression. The worst ones. The torture in Indonesia. I thought I knew what pain was but...I hadn’t. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. The only thing that kept me sane,” Victor says, imploring Merlin, “was your voice. Do you remember? Please tell me you remember it. Please tell me I’m not going mad, not now.”

Merlin swallows and his gaze skitters away, his first true break.

Victor waits, barely daring to move. Eggsy can hardly dare to breathe, limbs strung as tight as a bow.

It’s nigh on unbearable, and as the seconds tick by, Victor’s eyes take on a redder sheen, glassy and fragile. “I remember how Lee Unwin shoved me back. I was going to...I _wanted to_. It was all my fault. I killed my own candidate. I left a woman destitute and her child became….”

Out of the corner of his eye, Eggsy can see Arthur’s concerned glance in his direction and it only reinforces his determination to betray nothing, even when everything inside him feels like it’s expanding precipitously, threatening to burst apart.

Victor closes his eyes, and it’s enough to break the damn of moisture gathered in them, spilling down his cheeks. “And you told me, you told me it was on both of us. We both should have seen it coming. You bastard, you couldn’t even let me carry my own sins—”

Merlin’s chair scrapes harshly across the floor as he stands up, startling both Victor and Eggsy out of the spiralling trance Victor had been weaving. Without a word or a glance in Victor’s direction, he abruptly exits the room, leaving Victor stricken like a man whose final hope for a stay of execution has been denied.

Eggsy’s smashes his fist against the mirror, causing Victor to jump on the other side. He thinks he hears the telltale creak of glass about to shatter, but can’t see any cracks. It’d been his weak arm anyway, decidedly unsatisfying, and it just makes Eggsy seethe further. “Why does he refuse to see what’s right in bloody front of it him? How can he still be this fucking stubborn?”

“Pull yourself together, Galahad,” Arthur says mildly.

Eggsy grinds his teeth and does so, just barely. There’s too much frustration boiling inside him to remain still, so he takes to pacing down the short length of the room, trying to douse the worst of the flames.

When he feels like he can speak in a more or less calm tone again, he asks, “You believe him, don’t you, Arthur?”

Arthur grimaces. “I’ll admit he makes a compelling argument, as strange and impossible as it seems, to say nothing of the worrying implications.”

Eggsy could give a flying fuck about the implications. He doesn’t care how Harry leapfrogged into this life, what he sacrificed or if made a deal with the bloody Devil himself. Harry is back; it’s a repeating refrain in his heart. “Then what’s going to happen now?”

“Victor and Daniel did not pass the test,” Arthur says simply, and Eggsy’s about to read him the riot act when he holds up a hand to forestall him. “It would be unfair to deny Angeline the title she has rightfully earned, even you cannot argue that. However, it is also obvious we cannot simply dispense with him, given these highly unprecedented circumstances.”

It hits him then, an idea. A wonderful one that would solve all their problems. “Then give Victor a place at the Table as well,” Eggsy says. “He’s Harry. He _is_ a Kingsman agent.”

Arthur frowns, but looks pensive. “A new position hasn’t been created in almost ninety years. It would be...unorthodox, to say the least.”

It’s not a no. Eggsy rallies. He’s still got his puppy eyes when he needs to wield them. “Is that not the reality now, Arthur?”

“I’ll have to give the matter more consideration,” Arthur finally says, narrowing his gaze at Eggsy like he knows what he's doing. “But Galahad, this sort of action requires a vote put to the whole Table. And all must be in agreement.”

What Arthur doesn’t say: it would be difficult enough to persuade the other knights who never knew Harry to give a whole new position to a failed recruit, of all people. With Merlin potentially working against any efforts Eggsy would make, it would be next to impossible.

“Fuck,” Eggsy says.

“Indeed.”

 

_____

 

Eggsy knocks on the door to the interview room and pokes his head in before Victor can say anything. Bad habits and all. It allows him to catch Victor reassembling his armour in mid-action.

“There’s someone else who wants to see you,” he announces, and before Victor can ask, Eggsy places four little rodent paws on the ground and releases his grip from around Marmite’s barrel torso. The creature, to his credit, scampers immediately over to Victor’s feet and pins two front paws on his leg, little corkscrew tail wagging eagerly.

It brings the first real smile to Victor’s face that Eggsy’s seen since their blow up. He scoops the dog up and cradles him against his chest, making embarrassing baby noises at it and suffering the series of rabid licks to his chin that ensue.

“Thank you,” he says when he finally recovers enough of his wits to return his attention back to Eggsy.

“You want to get out of here?” Eggsy asks.

His features pinch with anxiety. “I guess...I’m to go home then.”

“Yeah. My home. Well, your home. Or your...old home.” Eggsy frowns. This could get confusing real fast. “If you want, that is. You’re also welcome to stay here, you know. Arthur’s not done with you yet. You may...remember him as Percival?”

Victor’s eyes haze over when he’s lost in recollection, a small line etched between his brows. “I think...I remember. He was...James’s partner. Roxy’s sponsor?”

“Lancelot now. You’ve already met her once.”

“Is he a good one?” Victor asks, and Eggsy suddenly remembers Harry’s last experience with the Arthur of his time. Chester King, the man who had willingly sent him to his death.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says. “Really good. He treats everyone fairly. He listens. Puts up with my bullshit.”

“Good. That’s good.” Victor sits back in his chair, content to simply bury his nose into Marmite’s short beige fur.

Eggsy can’t help but lean against the door frame and cross his arms, arching a brow with a bravado he doesn’t feel. “So, shall I have a taxi ready at the shop in forty?”

Victor finally looks back up at him, eyes dark with things Eggsy can’t put name to. “Alright.”

The inside of the taxi is imbued with a whole different sort of tense silence on the ride back, one burdened with more keen awareness, this time shared by them both. Marmite’s a nosy little fucker, standing on his rickety hind legs on Victor’s thigh to look out the windows, only to topple over whenever the cab took a sudden turn or braked, barely kept from a hard landing at their feet by his master’s quick reflexes.

Eggsy can’t help sneaking small sideways glances at him, gaze irresistibly drawn into his orbit. He knows from having watched Harry’s old recordings of his interactions when he’d been a recruit, he’d been embarrassingly moon-eyed, heart smeared in gruesome detail on his sleeve. While he likes to think he possesses more decorum these days, looking at Victor and seeing that shade again stokes up the ashes of those old feelings, churning up a few glowing embers still.

Much like before, the taxi pulls up to the end of the mews, and Victor looks out the window in silence, unmoving. “It’s funny,” he says quietly. “I didn’t recognise it before. I can recall exactly how little an impression it made on me.”

“You said it didn’t seem like my house,” Eggsy reminds him. “I had thought, at the time, you were remembering something.”

“It seemed too subdued for someone like yourself,” Victor admits. “I would have thought you’d live somewhere with a bit more flash. Now I know. I don’t think you would have chosen this place for yourself, had I not….”

“Come on,” Eggsy quickly suggests, already pulling on the door handle to escape the suffocating pressure threatening to smother him in the back seat.

But if he thought things would get better upon entering the house, he’s sorely mistaken. The old echoes of the last time they were here still ring through rooms. He imagines he can still see the tread of their foxtrot in the living room rug, even though the housekeeper has hoovered it many times over since then.

He turns to Victor, and maybe a little too desperately asks, “Would you care for something to drink?”

“I...no, thank you. It’s probably not a good idea in this state.”

“Right. Understandable,” Eggsy says, and for a second is determined to do the same, but he caves only a heartbeat later and turns up a glass with damnably shaking hands.

Victor gently sets Marmite on the floor and watches as the little rat tears off, nails clicking on the floorboards and tags jangling, eager to explore the house and all its exciting new scents. He doesn’t know when Victor stops watching his dog and starts watching Eggsy, but he can feel it like a hand hovering just over the nape of his neck.

He still wants to break something. That feeling hasn’t really left this whole time. Instead, he swallows down a mouthful of burning scotch and stares at the blank white wall in front of him. “So what’s it like, remembering it all?”

There’s a long bout of silence that greets his question. Alright, maybe it’s not the most savvy thing to have asked. But finally: “...it feels forcing myself to stop treading water. Letting myself sink to the bottom of the ocean, and then looking up to glimpse all these...familiar shapes passing by overhead. Sometimes the angle of sun will be just right and illuminate their edges, and I’ll know what they are. And sometimes they’re nothing more than silhouettes swimming too far out of reach.”

“The things you can see most clearly...are they only bad memories?” The way Harry had looked at him with so much disappointment, that one has always stayed with Eggsy. _Can’t you see…?_ Of course it would be one of the first things he’d remember.

“The memories I see most clearly are the ones for which I had felt something intensely.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Eggsy can barely say.

“Eggsy,” Victor says his name like a sigh. “Won’t you look at me now?”

He doesn’t want to. For a moment, he’s certain he _can’t_ , feet taking deep root into the floorboards.

“Eggsy.” There’s a change in the tone, just a trace of it, that same end-of-the-rope desperation he’d pleaded with Merlin and had been subsequently refused.

Slowly, with every inch drenched in reluctance, Eggsy turns around.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to look at Victor. Eggsy can’t predict when those times occur. Most of the time, it’s fine. Victor is just another young man, his candidate, a smart mouthed little shit, but ultimately very kind. And like repeating a word over and over again until it loses all meaning, Eggsy has scrutinised his features so much, they almost become generic: brown eyes, cupid’s bow, strong jaw, ears he’d eventually grow into, candyfloss hair.

And then there are moments, moments very much like now, where it seems as if Harry is only wearing a very flimsy mask, and Eggsy wants to tell him it’s a shit disguise, and isn’t he supposed to be a better spy than that?

“How’s the head?” he asks when Victor parts his lips to speak.

Rude, maybe, but nonetheless, they’re both grateful for the reprieve. The lines in Victor’s body relax, shoulders unwinding from the rigid bridge they’d formed beneath his jaw. “Riotous.”

“I think I’ve got something that can help.”

The ground floor loo has slowly transformed over the years into a makeshift medical clinic, where a number of various bottles, ointments, tubes, and other first aid accessories see too frequent use. There’s an even worse reason for it: his home has frequently been his first stop straight off a mission, much to Roxy’s and Merlin’s frustration. But he’s older and tires more easily; sometimes he only wants to slap on a few butterfly stitches, swallow a mouthful of meds, and sleep before braving the world again.

Eggsy sets his drink down on the sink ledge and digs around, briefly glancing at and discarding various containers until he holds two out to Victor, giving them each an enticing rattle. “I’ve got your basic paracetamol if you’re feeling righteous and some oxy if you want to really have some fun.”

But Victor isn’t paying attention to him so much as staring at the blank white walls, gaze dragging over their innocuousness and settling on the empty expanse over the toilet. When he finally meets Eggsy’s eyes again, he smiles sadly. “I’m so sorry the last words we ever said to each other were in so much anger.”

And Eggsy just _can’t_. Not right now. Maybe not ever. “Take the goddamn tablets.” He shoves both bottles into Victor’s hands and retrieves his glass, quickly escaping the loo.

In hindsight, perhaps taking a newly-remembering Victor back to the so-called scene of the crime—twice over—had been a poor decision. He doesn’t get much time to stew over his predicament, though, because Victor is hot on his heels, practically stomping.

“I don’t understand you,” Victor spits out. “You _wanted_ me to be Harry so damn much, and now that I remember, you look at me like I’m a bloody abomination!”

“No. It’s not that. I don’t know.” Eggsy shakes his head and grits his teeth. The old restlessness is back with a vengeance, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t form his hand into a fist to punch a wall the way he so badly wants to. “I don’t know. I thought it would be different. I thought it would be like before, but it’s...not.”

He hears a huff of exasperation behind him. “Well, what did you expect? You’re twenty years older. You’ve had more experiences in two decades than most ever get in their lifetimes. You were married. You’ve had a _child_. You’re not that sullen boy with a chip on his shoulder—”

Eggsy whirls around, practically snarling, “Then why is it every time I look at you, all I can see and hear is your disappointment? Jesus, sometimes I feel like I’ve lived my entire life trying to make you proud, knowing I never would because you were dead. You were always going to be this dark cloud hanging over my life.”

There’s a blazing light in Victor’s eyes, some glow of intensity that burned hot when everything else about him was calm, almost preternaturally still. _Can’t you see…?_

“And here you are now, by some inexplicable miracle with your too little, too late apology. And this is supposed to be where I finally get some closure, isn’t it? Heal? Become a whole person again? Only, it doesn’t feel any different!” It’s pounding at his head now, a growing headache, all tight pressure and relentless pulsing. Eggsy pinches the sore bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “No, it feels worse. It feels a lot fucking worse. Because here you are, and look at what a fucking mess I still am. Look at what I’ve done with everything you’ve given me. I’ve wasted it.”

Because that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? He’d made a vow to do right by Harry, always. To live like Harry wanted him to live: knowing his value was immense, shouldering his responsibilities with aplomb, and owning up to his mistakes, but really, not making mistakes in the first place. A gentleman.

He’d been doomed from the start, really.

And while Harry’s death would likely have happened regardless of whether or not Eggsy had ever called that number on the back of his father’s medal, the two—his ending, Eggsy’s new beginning—are inextricably entwined. He hasn’t lived a life worthy of honouring Harry’s death.

“Was the picture I painted such a rosy one?” Victor asks. It makes Eggsy blearily reopen his eyes at that contrary tone. “Did I seem like I really had my shit together? I...decorated my toilet in dead insects. I had my dog stuffed because I couldn’t bear to part with one of the few beings in my life I was ever close to. I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. I had no siblings. No family. Few friends. I was definitely a functioning alcoholic. I...think I was very lonely. It felt lonely.”

“But you seemed so content with your life, like it had meaning and satisfaction,” Eggsy argues. “You said if I could learn, I could transform.” _Like you. Into you_. That’s what had been fucking implied.

“Into something _better_ than what I was!” Victor insists, like he can read Eggsy’s thoughts. “Because you were already greater than me, even back then. You were... _are_...so bright. Sometimes it’s blinding.”

“Well, if you apparently failed so badly, what chance did I have, then!”

Victor cants his head. His tone both softens and becomes too relentlessly precise, able to make a perfect incision with each syllable and inflection. “Do you know how people spoke of you all throughout training? With awe and reverence. They would constantly tell me how honoured I should be that the great Galahad saw something promising enough in me to bring me in. How many successes you’ve had. How you’re one of Kingsman’s best agents of all time.” And softer still. “And how kind. And generous. You talk to everyone, even the janitors. You give everyone everything you have of yourself. Sometimes too much. Maybe your failures have honed that light into something hard and glinting, Eggsy, but you never closed your heart the way I did so early on. You never stopped.”

Eggsy swallows. His tongue feels thick, too big for his mouth, and his skull pounds with all the blood rushing through his ears. It’s hot, his cheeks feel aflame, and yet icy cold, especially in his fingers and toes. It’s just so difficult to settle on any one decisive emotion or sensation when his wires feel hopelessly tangled up.

“And you’ve become so much more than what I could possibly have ever hoped for you, which is why I will always be sorry for those things I said. I was already sorry the moment I had stepped out the door. I...I thought I’d get to fix it later. Not just your situation, but us.” Victor takes a step forward, then another, and another, until Eggsy has to look up at him, and all he sees are Harry’s eyes and Harry’s regret. “I wasn’t lying earlier. The first time I saw you, before I knew who you were, I felt drawn to you, like my whole life had been leading up to that moment of meeting you again. Now I know, I feel it to be true: you were the one I came back for.”

What a surreal thing it is, to finally have happen what Eggsy had dreamed and hoped for so long, knowing it was an impossible desire, having learned to live with the ache like a poorly healed injury. And yet now it’s not, and the very foundations upon which he’s built his entire life have crumbled.

His next indrawn breath is shaky, threatening to unmoor so many things within his chest. Everything feels fragile and tenuous, his composure most of all.

He thinks about leaning forward, maybe, just a little bit more, just like the way Victor seems to lean into him so tenderly. This time, it wouldn’t feel like shrugging one’s way towards hell. This time, it would be closing a fraying circuit. He even starts to raise a hand to lay it across Victor’s chest, wanting to feel the reassuring beat of his heart.

And then fucking Marmite weaves his bony body through Eggsy’s ankles to get to Victor, clawing at his boiler suit and yapping to be picked up.

“Oh, darling,” Victor croons, _not_ to Eggsy, bending down to scoop Marmite up. “Done exploring, are we? It’s been a day.”

Eggsy steps back and translates the awkwardness of the near miss into rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m pretty knackered myself. Why don’t we make an early night of it and talk more later?”

“Did you need one of these too?” Victor shakes the bottles he’s still juggling along with his dog.

Eggsy takes them off his hands and sorts out their respective meds, letting the better angels of his nature keep him from the lure of the heavier option.

Victor retires upstairs first, and Eggsy waits, pottering about downstairs with things that don’t need doing because he’s a coward, and wilfully resisting having a second glass, which would lead to a third, and possibly more. He even tries to ring Roxy, but gets her voicemail. Probably having a private celebration with their new Bors. It’s not an altogether joyous occasion for him, try as he might to be graceful about it.

Finally, there’s nothing else he can possibly do that wouldn’t ultimately be detrimental to his health, so he slowly climbs the stairs and makes his way to his bedroom, only to freeze in the doorway when he finds Victor sitting on the edge of his bed, changed into another pair of sweats and t-shirt stolen from Eggsy’s dresser.

“You know this isn’t actually the guest room now,” Eggsy says once he finds the wherewithal to speak.

“I know.” Victor gives him a flat look to accompany the obvious. “I sort of ended up here subconsciously before I realised it, and then….”

“Feels weird to be a guest in one’s home?” Eggsy hazards to guess. “I can take the other bed. You stay here. It’s fine.”

“It’s not. This is your home now in every conceivable sense. I’ll go.”

“Your rat is already asleep. Honestly, it’s fine,” Eggsy says, nodding to the snoring ball of fur huddled against Victor’s hip.

“You can stay, and I can stay,” Victor proposes like he isn’t asking Eggsy to sleep with him, albeit in the most literal sense of the word. “It’s a big bed. You didn’t mind last time.” There’s a challenging gleam in his eye.

“Knew about that one, did you.” Somehow, though, Eggsy doesn’t feel embarrassed at having been caught out, not after everything that transpired after, not when he just wants to reach out and touch Victor anyways. Always.

“I hadn’t slept so well in so long. I haven’t since.” Victor shrugs and then scoots back up on the bed, digging up the covers to bury himself beneath. Marmite startles awake and sleepily plods over to the head of the bed in order to tunnel his way beneath the covers, ending up as an ambiguous lump by Victor’s feet. One big happy sleepover.

Eggsy reluctantly starts forward, stripping his clothes off and steadfastly ignoring the gaze that follows him around the room and feels like static electricity crackling along his skin as he trades button down for cotton and silk wool blend for flannel. When there’s nothing else for it, he tentatively climbs in beneath the covers on the other side and stiffly lies flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Shit,” he says.

“What?”

“Forgot the lights.”

It’s another whole round of throwing off the covers, crossing the room, and flipping the switch, but once the room is plunged into darkness, Eggsy feels like he can breathe easier now that a shadow has been pulled over the harsh lines of the world. He feels his way back to the bed and climbs in with more confidence.

Maybe he drops his guard a bit too much, because the question falls from his mouth before he can think better of it. “What’s it like to have lived thinking you were one person, and then to suddenly realise you had been someone else? Do you feel different?”

His answer isn’t immediate, but the silence is contemplative rather than outraged. “It’s like...all my life there were these two misaligned lenses at the edges of my vision. Didn’t really affect the overall outlook of my existence when I looked straight ahead, but it was always there on the periphery, and anything I could glimpse through them seemed familiar, but out of focus.” The mattress shifts a bit as Victor rolls onto his side, facing him. Eggsy can feel him staring, but the darkness in the room blunts its impact somehow. “Until one day, today, they just snapped into place. Everything’s clearer, if I look that way.”

“It’s not like picking up right where you left off, is it?” Eggsy asks wistfully. Time still marched on, long after Harry died.

“No,” Victor says. “I’ve still had twenty years as someone else’s son, someone else’s schoolmate. Friend. Student.”

“Do you still want to be addressed as Victor?”

“I don’t know. It’s more familiar to me.” Victor pauses and then huffs in amusement. “For most of my life, I wanted to change my name because of that bloody documentary. Now that I have a valid opportunity, I find myself rather reluctant to do so. I suppose I don’t want to create any more confusion. For others or myself.”

The old ache, this time, is less pointed so much as diffuse as a soft downpour. Victor remembers being Harry, but he can’t really be Harry again anymore. This time, that knowledge doesn’t feel like the end of the world. Maybe because that world already ended long ago.

Mustering the courage to shift onto his side and meet Victor head on, he finds his eyes have become accustomed to the dark, able to more clearly pick out the smooth lines of Victor’s youthful face and sharper-defined features. He tries to compare them to Harry’s older, more lined visage from what he can remember: the way his nose and chin had grown larger and wider, his jaw and neck sagged with age, the lines around his eyes deeply carved. Does Victor look at him and recall someone who was younger and wider eyed? “Is it strange how our places have changed? I’m supposed to be the older, wiser one. Doesn’t really feel that way, though.”

“Not particularly. I knew you as older first. Remembering you from twenty years ago is a bit like looking at an photograph. You may have been that once, but it’s not who you are now. You’re still quite handsome, though, if that’s your worry.”

Eggsy grins despite himself, maybe just a little bit vainer now that there’s more at stake. “We really can’t ever go back, can we?” he asks, needing to hear the words spoken aloud like they were the key to unweaving some final illusion.

“Always forward. If you want.” After a moment of hesitation, Victor unearths a long, pale hand and lays it palm up in the gap between them, fingers lax and casual, able to be excused as an idle gesture and not what Eggsy knows he is silently asking for.

Slowly, Eggsy draws his hand from beneath the covers, is careful to align his palm against the cool, dry planes of Victor’s, weaving their fingers together and then finding himself clasping them tight, unable to let go. “I want.”

“Alright.” He can’t see most of Victor’s face, half tucked into the pillows, just the corner of his mouth that is nevertheless turned up in a heartening glimmer of real joy.


	9. Chapter 9

When Victor emerges from the loo wearing Harry’s old dressing gown over his flushed, dewy skin, it gives Eggsy pause for, well, a number of reasons. He forcibly wrests his mind away from the way the morning light hits the collection of moisture pooled in the hollow of Victor’s throat or the dark tendrils of hair plastered against his pale skin, and finds himself overwhelmed by the garment itself. The gown is the right length, maybe a bit looser in the chest and shoulders, but it’s arguably a far better fit on Victor than it had ever been on Eggsy the few times he’d sunk low enough to wrap it around himself.

Victor catches the look on his face and freezes. “Are you alright?” But when he sees what Eggsy’s gaze is focused on, his fingers briefly skim over the edges of the fabric almost guiltily. “I’m sorry. I saw this in the wardrobe and I thought it would be...I didn’t have anything here, so….”

Harry had worn a dressing gown and pyjamas as confidently as he had worn his finest suit: unselfconscious, maybe even a little _too_ aware of how good clothes looked on him. The confidence of bespoke, Harry had once told him, was immeasurable.

Victor is not as confident as Harry had been. Harry’s decades of experience may have been starting to trickle back into his conscious, but they weren’t the same thing as having lived them directly for himself.

“It’s fine,” Eggsy assures. “It’s more yours than it was ever mine. Just took me by surprise, is all. I’ve a feeling that’s going to happen for some time yet.”

“Not just for you.” A touch of frustration seeps through Victor's words. “I keep catching myself doing something without thinking and realising it’s not something I’d ever done before. It’s disconcerting. Earlier, I woke up and found myself thinking about the suit I wanted to wear today as if I had a whole wardrobe of them at my disposal.”

Eggsy tilts his head in consideration, immediately liking the visual his mind conjures up. “Maybe we should get you one.”

It catches Victor off guard. “What? No, that’s not really necessary.”

But now that the idea’s taken root, Eggsy finds himself enamoured with the symmetry of it. “You had a suit made for me long before it was certain I’d be an agent.” And then, of course, he had failed out, and Harry wouldn't know just how prescient that prematurely-commissioned suit had been.

“But I’m not going to be a Kingsman.”

“I wouldn’t give up on the idea just yet,” Eggsy says.

“What do you mean?”

“Technically, you didn’t fail the test. It’s more like you were interrupted before you could even make the choice,” he points out. “And then with everything that happened after, any further tests would be unnecessary. You’re really a Kingsman in all but name at this point, and I’m going to make sure you get what you deserve, which is a position at the Table.”

“But there are no open positions left,” Victor says slowly like Eggsy hasn’t put that together for himself.

“Let me worry about that.”

“Eggsy, you do realise I’m not actually anyone that gets special privileges here? These rules are in place for a reason.”

“No, what you’re not realising is that you _are_ special, Mr Victory Baby,” he insists, privately amused at how Victor’s expression transforms into a scowl at the much-loathed term. “You and I have been breaking the rules for decades. In fact, it was you who started it by bringing me in—no, by bringing my father in. Now you’ve just broken the rules on dying, for Christ’s sake.”

“Why would you even do all this for me in the first place?” Victor asks, but before Eggsy can even open his mouth, he rushes to add, “I’ve had a good run, haven’t I? Most agents don’t get to live as long as I’ve done, and no one we know of has ever come back around for a second go of it. And…” After a hesitant pause that lasts just long enough to hit Eggsy like a stone to the gut, “...you don’t owe me anything. You never did.”

Eggsy quickly looks away, focusing instead on the nearly bare surface of his dresser, containing just a bottle of cologne to lightly dab on the collar of his shirt, a pair of cufflinks he really ought to put back in the small drawer where he keeps all his small accessories, and a photograph of his mum and dad, so old and faded now from the sun that they look like they're haunting the frame.

“This isn’t about owing anyone anything,” he says. “It’s not like I’m doing all this for _your_ father.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the flinch. Eggsy’s ashamed to admit how viciously good it feels, just for a moment, before he feels twice as bad as before.

“This is what you’re good at. This is who you were and always meant to be,” Eggsy says, turning to look Victor in the eye, trying for reassuring. “And Kingsman could use more good agents like you. We go through them too quickly these days for my liking. Aside from a few archaic, pointless rules, there's no reason why there shouldn’t be more of us about. The world would certainly be better for it.”

He’d been doing something before this whole untimely distraction, hadn’t he? Eggsy glances down at the strips of his tie hanging around his neck, collar popped up, the inside of the wardrobe door with the long mirror built into it still open. Ah, right. He gets back to it, adjusting the ends of the silk fabric before creating the first loop.

“There’s a Table meeting today at the mansion. You may remember your Arthur liked to hold them at the shop,” he continues in the loaded silence that now permeates his bedroom, not mentioning that the purpose of the meeting is to swear in Angeline. He tries not to find Victor in the mirror, concentrating on avoiding any errant creases in his tie. “You’re welcome to come up with me. Your clearance level should still work. If you want to, that is.”

Victor doesn’t respond for so long that Eggsy thinks he’s sulking, but by the time he breaks down and tears his gaze from his perfect Windsor knot to locate Victor’s reflection, he finds him sitting on the end of bed, stroking Marmite’s apple-round skull, and the rodent is loving it, gazing adoringly back up at his master in a way that reminds Eggsy a little too uncomfortably of his younger self.

As if sensing Eggsy’s scrutiny, Victor looks up and catches his eye in the mirror, there’s nothing on his face. Just a smooth, bland mask. Even his gaze is neutral, something Harry had failed at managing most of the time.

“Alright. It’s not like I have anything else going on at the moment.”

 

_____

 

Eggsy had always wondered why Kingsman used to hold its Table meetings at the shop rather than at headquarters, which seemed a hell of a lot more secure. Merlin had explained that in early days, the agency actually used the shop as their main base of operations. The mansion had only come later, gifted to them after one of Kingsman’s founding members had passed and left it to the agency in his will. Given how fond Kingsman was of tradition, they continued to hold official meetings at the shop for the rest of the century, and well into the next. It had only been their most recent Arthur, who, in the wake of V-Day, had made the unilateral decision that Kingsman needed to update their security protocols and moved all agency-related business to Hertfordshire. Nowadays, with the exception of the secret lift to their connecting shuttle, the shop was just that: a posh tailor shop. Even the armoury in Fitting Room Three had been moved out.

The formal dining room within the mansion is certainly a lot larger than the one at the shop (and Eggsy can’t help but think a few more chairs could be added to the longer table without encroaching on anyone’s sense of space). In aesthetic decoration, however, it feels much the same with its polished wood furniture, dark wallpaper, and imperious paintings of Kingsman’s founders sternly gazing down at him from their honoured positions on the walls. Better light though: the large nearly floor-to-ceiling windows eased some of the stereotypical masculine dourness.

There’s still twenty minutes before the meeting start, and Eggsy finds himself first to arrive. Despite the bittersweet occasion, the nice day easily floods the room with its bright sunlight, and Eggsy can’t quite work himself into the sullen mood he so badly wants.

When Roxy enters some ten minutes later, she immediately takes Tristan’s chair beside him. “I have updates.” But before she gets a chance to explain, more agents start trickling in by some unspoken signal. “I’ve sent the intel to your tablet. In short: we have some promising new leads, and we’re now free to go after them ourselves, if you’re still in.”

“Yeah, I’m still in,” Eggsy mutters, flexing his weaker arm. And just like that, his blood is up and he’s chomping at the bit, wishing he could forgo the whole bloody pomp and circumstance he’s currently trapped in to do some real work, and only a little because he’s still somewhat resentful over how it all went down.

Roxy doesn’t immediately vacate her stolen chair, even though Eggsy can see Tristan walking through the door. “I heard about what happened. I’m sorry, Eggs.”

“It’s fine,” Eggsy says shortly. It’s certainly not Roxy’s fault, or even Angeline’s. He has to remember that. “It’s not over yet.”

“Arthur said you want to have a new position created.”

That, however, rankles. “I never thought Arthur would be one to spill secrets during pillow talk.”

Roxy’s icy gaze almost makes him want to cringe away, even when he can only see just a sliver of it from the corner of his eye. So maybe he’s not off to such a great start if he needs to win votes. “You know I’ll support you, so stop acting like an ass.”

Before he can shamefully apologise, Roxy pushes off the chair with a quick apology to Tristan.

“Galahad,” Tristan greets as he settles in. 

By the time Eggsy looks across the table, Roxy is already back in her own seat. He tries to give her a pleading look from across the table anyhow.

Finally, with six agents physically on the premises, a much larger ratio than normal, Arthur walks in with Merlin trailing close behind, who doesn’t once glance at Eggsy no matter how hard he silently implores him to. “Good afternoon, Agents. Shall we begin? Glasses, if you will.”

With his Kingsman glasses on, the rest of the chairs are filled with their holographic counterparts from all over the world. Mostly men, but Angeline now made for a record-breaking three female agents on the roster at one time. Even Roxy didn’t always choose female candidates to try out for new openings.

Angeline sits in Bors’s seat at the very end, opposite Arthur, which may have been unnerving for anyone, nevermind a rookie, but she only appears vindicated. It’s too early for her to have a Kingsman suit yet, so she’s dressed in an almost as good sharply fitted blazer and matching trousers, blond hair pulled back into a sleek Chignon. Even Eggsy has to admit that she fits in well already.

“I know we're all very busy and the occasions in which we come together are rarely happy ones, which is why I like to insist we do so when a new knight joins us,” Arthur begins, meeting and holding the gaze of each man and woman serving at his Table. “This organisation was founded on more than just myths, it was founded on ideals: peace, justice, humanity, _renewal_.”

Eggsy blinks just as Arthur looks to him last, and there’s _something_ there, he can see. But Arthur’s a damn hard read and Eggsy’s never quite managed it in all the decades he’s been here.

Then Arthur tears his gaze from Eggsy and resumes his middle-distance, noble expression to encompass the Table as a whole.

“Just as the spirit of Camelot can never die, so, too, shall England ever remain, and with her, those who fight in her honour. It is why when one falls, another comes forward, picks up the mantle, and carries on. Ever-renewing, ever-living, ever-eternal. It is why I want to welcome our new knight, Bors. _As it once was, so shall it be again_.”

Eggsy has to hand it to the man: for a speech he’s had to give repeatedly over the years for every newly inducted knight, Arthur somehow manages to make it sound refreshing and hopeful each and every damn time.

At last, a little smile turns up the corner of Arthur’s mouth, giving him a rather pleasant expression all around, less forbidding, less sharp. “And now that that’s over with, let us toast our new agent and welcome her properly.”

In true Kingsman fashion, the scotch is poured liberally all around for those in attendance, and those abroad had likely gone out and bought a bottle of their own for the occasion, not that they even needed the excuse. They all raise their glasses to Bors and take their drinks and just like that, the formality drops like a falling curtain.

Agents are up and out of their chairs, moving to greet Bors properly, congratulating Roxy on her impeccable taste, some jokingly asking if she’ll ever turn her back on Angeline again in light of the modified final test, starting up casual conversations with each other and trying to catch up on one another’s lives—depending on their various assignments, it can be several months before any two given agents see each other in person or otherwise—going for second and even third refills.

Somewhere in there, Merlin has already slipped away without anyone even noticing. Damn.

It feels like going through the motions, answering inquiries about his family (elbow almost as good as new, Daisy was doing well in school, his mother was in good health, Yumi was settling into her new home; no, he had broken up with Lizzy over six months ago), swirling scotch around in his glass to cause a mesmerising whirlpool as he slowly falls into the revolving orbit around Angeline. By the time it’s his turn to step up to bat, his head is buzzing pleasantly, enough to allow him to put on a convincingly warm game face and offer Angeline his hand. “Congratulations and welcome to Kingsman, Bors. I look forward to seeing what you’ll do here.”

“Thank you, Galahad.” He thinks, when she looks at him and politely smiles, that she hasn’t quite forgotten how he headbutted her that one time.

He doesn’t actually know that much about Angeline nor any particular desire to find out; therefore, he has nothing to ask after. He doesn’t know who she loves, what she fights for, what circumstances she’s had to overcome, or what motivated her to accept Roxy’s offer in the first place. He knows she’s either self-serving enough or in possession of such a strong moral compass, she’d put the good of Kingsman over any sort of kinship she has with her sponsor, but he can't determine which it is. He doesn’t know where the final lines with her lie.

And he wonders if, one day, he will drink a tribute to her passing as well.

His interaction ends with an awkward nod and an, “Excuse me,” as he steps back and lets the others swarm around her once more. She’s beautiful in that stunning and forbidding Scandinavian way that immediately puts her leagues above most other normal-looking human beings, an attribute that does not go unnoticed in a room full of purveyors of fine taste.

Roxy has remained separate from them this whole time, having stayed back to have one of her foreheads-together, personal conversations with Arthur that doesn't concern business if the intimate angle of their stances is any indication, but she looks up just as he’s cleared the table and is halfway to the door.

“Galahad.”

Eggsy stops. He feels more than sees her approach, but before she can get out whatever is on her mind, he turns to her and says, “She’ll do well here. You did good.”

“I know,” Roxy says simply, searching his face. “We’ll figure this out.”

Eggsy swallows and nods. “I’d like to stay longer, but….”

“Don’t lie,” Roxy admonishes, but it’s gentle, even a little sad. She touches his arm, giving it an encouraging little rub. “Go on then. These ones,” she nods at the others, “will be mooning about for another hour at least. So predictable.”

“If you like your candidate even a little, you really ought to rescue her before then.”

“Well, she _was_ going to shoot me.” Roxy smirks. “Thought I’d let her writhe a bit.”

Eggsy lets out a low, appreciative whistle. “I’d hate to get on your bad side, Lancelot.”

Roxy grins with a hint of feral teeth like the glint of a knife. “And don’t you forget it.”

As he slowly meanders through the ornate corridors of the mansion, Eggsy finds himself in a mood that he can’t quite place: light in the head, heavy in the heart, restless and unsatisfied. From his long and sordid history of spectacularly stupid doings, such sentiments usually herald a particularly egregious act of recklessness, and even knowing that much can’t calm the churning in his gut.

What he really ought to do is head down to any number of healthy outlets on the estate—the gym, the range, even the obstacle course—to work out his frustration. Instead, he wanders back to his office, finding Victor laid out on his couch as casually as a throw blanket in an echo of the position he’d been found so many months ago. He’s still wearing his boiler suit (they really needed to get him more clothes, Eggsy thinks). Even Marmite is reliably resting on his stomach.

Small differences this time. Instead of a book, Victor nurses a nearly empty glass of scotch from Eggsy’s private bar, a deeply contemplative and not altogether happy expression set upon his features.

Without a word, Eggsy peels off his glasses and drops them carelessly on his desk as he valiantly resists a detour to the bar himself in favour of perching himself on the edge of the couch, then drawing his legs up onto the cushions and lying down on his side alongside Victor’s warm body, ignoring how Marmite lifts his head and glares at him. Victor is slender enough that Eggsy isn’t even in immediate danger of falling onto the floor. Like this, he can rest his chin along Victor’s slim shoulder, one leg hooking around his, Eggsy’s free arm coming up to rest across his chest and feel the steady drumming of his heart.

From an outsider’s perspective, it likely appears as if Eggsy were clinging desperately to Victor like an oversized stuffed animal for safety, maybe comfort. Perhaps it’s not so far off the mark.

Victor barely stirs through it all, just patiently lets Eggsy make minute adjustments to his body without question, waiting for Eggsy to at last settle back down into a comfortable spoon before saying, “I’m guessing Angeline was sworn in today.”

Of course he’d remember the protocol now. Eggsy doesn’t bother denying it. “It was fine. Went down as expected.”

“Angeline deserves it. She’ll make a good agent.”

“I know. It’s just...looking at her, at how the others shook her hand and smiled at her and made all those polite little overtures to welcome a fellow agent in arms...all I could think about was how much I wanted it to be you.” Eggsy sighs. “I wanted it so badly to be you.”

“I’m sorry,” Victor says, quiet and tight, like the words pain him to get out. “I really...I suppose only now it’s just hit me how much I wanted it as well. I’m so sorry I disappointed you.”

“I’m disappointed,” Eggsy admits. “But not with you. Maybe more myself.”

Victor huffs out a bitter chuckle. “So this is how it feels.”

“Shoe on the other foot and all,” Eggsy agrees, finding himself smiling perversely in spite of the situation.

It goes silent after that, at first bleak and then gradually surfacing into calm respite. Eggsy listens to Marmite’s little snores and small woofs as he’s caught amidst some unknowable canine dream, Victor’s soft breaths, the creak of leather every time he shifts, the droning ticking of the clock on his desk. Like a relief, Victor’s body solidifies in awareness beneath the touch points of his, every carved angle and plane. The little wayward curls that catch around his ear. The short hairs that scrape his neck. How his eyelashes sweep his cheeks when he closes his eyes.

The arm pillowing Eggsy’s head grows numb as he breathes in the scent of Victor’s skin and smells his own soap, Harry’s soap. He tries to close his eyes and imagine it all differently, but Victor’s skin is smoother than Harry’s, more heated to touch. There’s still a youthful freshness that clings to him, perceptible to all of his senses beyond sight.

He spreads his palm over Victor’s sternum, a chest less defined even after months of training. All of him, really. His gangly youthfulness still waiting to settle into an older maturity. But inside, beyond all this skin and bone and sinew, is another lifetime. It shines from Victor’s eyes when he cranes his head to look at Eggsy, a keen recognition, one that has a darker, richer, and more ruthless edge than any twenty-something year old ought to possess.

Victor’s foot rubs along the inside of his ankle, having slipped the toe of his foot beneath the hem of Eggsy’s trousers and pushed down his sock to sing across his bare skin. Up and down, slowly, with purpose. No idle mistake.

 _We shouldn’t_ , his last dwindling voice of reason gasps as Victor edges just a little bit closer, and Eggsy’s face turns up just a little bit more of its own volition, until his lips smear across the only slightly coarse line of Victor’s jaw. Eggsy runs his palm down to the hard flatness of Victor’s stomach, fingers skimming Marmite’s fur, feeling the way Victor’s abdominals quiver beneath his touch.

Their eyes meet, and Eggsy half-wishes he could say this came about unexpectedly, that he merely reacted, but his desire has been slowly rolling in like a wave, easily spotted from a distance, the breaking inevitable.

It seems Victor would agree. He becomes the braver one, drawing his hand up to cup Eggsy’s jaw and lean in, kissing him properly this time, a chaste press of lips but far from tentative, thoroughly drenched in intention. Waiting.

Eggsy breathes out, a puff of hot air between them. Every cell in his body aches to touch with that _more_ , wants to be lured forward. His head is light, his body is airborne.

To _hell_ with it.

He grabs the back of Victor’s neck, keeps him there as he surges forward. Victor opens his mouth, and Eggsy slides in, tongue and teeth. His leg fully slips over Victor’s hips to straddle him, barely cognisant of the glass that goes tumbling into some crevice and Marmite quickly leaping out of the way lest his tiny body be crushed. He feels the resultant pull of Victor’s grin beneath his lips, and in retaliation, kisses that widened mouth, transforming it into a moan when he rocks his hips forward. Victor’s hands scrabble through his hair, ruining the neat style it had been combed in for the day, then tug at the knot of his tie, undoing a morning’s worth of perfect work with clever-quick fingers.

Eggsy pulls away slightly, lips cooling in the sudden air between them, the air heavy with their panting, but everything inside of him is a continuously thrumming pulse of want, pounding in his chest, throbbing in his cock, stinging in his lips. 

And yapping, so much goddamn yapping.

Marmite skitters back and forth before them, barking ferociously as if in revenge for interrupting his comfortable repose.

“I hate your fucking dog,” Eggsy says, resting his forehead against Victor’s shoulder.

For once, Victor looks like he’s in agreement. It’s on the tip of Eggsy’s tongue to suggest putting the fucking thing in a drawer.

But as his ardour cools, reality comes flooding back in all its self-conscious, painfully aware glory, an effective dousing on Eggsy’s overheated senses: making out with one’s candidate on one’s couch in one’s office of one’s secret spy organisation like a horny teenager in the back of a cab is a bit sordid, even for him. 

“No,” Victor suddenly says sternly, cutting right through Eggsy’s thoughts because for a moment, it’s very much _Harry_ issuing the rebuke, though he doesn’t know if Harry would ever have followed it up by grabbing the loosened ends of his tie and yanking him forward. “I know that look. Stop thinking about it.”

“This isn’t a good idea,” Eggsy says anyway. “You’re my candidate—”

“ _Former_ candidate. You don’t hold any authority over me anymore,” Victor says. “And technically, you were my candidate first.”

“I’m over twenty years older than you. I could be your _father_ —”

“And I was more than twice your age the first time we met but that didn’t stop me from wanting you just as much.”

“You…” Eggsy stares at him, mouth opening and closing in what is probably an unappealing manner. “You wanted me? Back then?”

Victor gives him a look like it had been all so very obvious, exasperated at first, then dissipating to leave a lingering tenderness behind as he reaches up to stroke his fingers down Eggsy’s cheek like he can’t help himself. “From the first moment I saw you outside the police station in your stupid snapback and your mouth gaping open much like it is now, in fact.”

Eggsy’s teeth click as he slams his mouth shut, frowning in the wake of all this new information, like it’s too good to possibly be true. “So I wasn’t just imagining things or...acting like a besotted fool for nothing...you...knew, didn’t you? How I...what I felt for….”

“I don’t think I knew, maybe suspected, but not a shadow beyond a doubt,” Victor confesses. “I can’t remember with that much finesse, I...I knew what I felt for you. I knew you were grateful, that you looked up to me. It was intimidating. Not something I wanted to abuse. I thought that maybe we were closer than any other candidate I’d had before, but I didn’t know if that had simply been me. I fear if I attempt to extrapolate from that, I’d only be projecting my own feelings onto the situation—”

“It wasn’t just you,” Eggsy says. “It wasn’t just gratitude or admiration. You were...you felt like my everything at the time. And when you died, it felt like I had lost everything for a good long while.”

Eventually, he would be reminded of other significant aspects of his life: his mother, Daisy, Merlin, Roxy, his whole new purpose at Kingsman. Then later, Asami, _Yumi_. His Plum. All those things gradually flowed back in to recolour his world and fill in those gaping, ragged holes, maybe not completely, but enough.

Or, he had thought it had been enough, would never have dreamed of asking for more, because he had more than most of his kind ever would.

Jesus, what could have been.

Victor’s eyes are soft, vulnerable with stricken memories, and at first Eggsy thinks he’s about to utter more heartbreaking apologies for things neither one of them could change now, but instead, resolve washes over his features and he leans in close enough that Eggsy can feel the heat of his skin and finds himself pinned in place by the ferocity of his gaze.

“Then stop fucking holding back.”

The command is punctuated with the scrape of teeth across Eggsy’s bottom lip.

Eggsy shudders and feels the last of his decades-earned discipline crumble away like sand.

His body immediately recalls where they last paused, happy to pick it right back up, hands tangling through Victor’s hair to yank at those curls, pulling him closer, licking into his mouth and swallowing Victor’s soft moans, pressing him deeper into the couch cushions—

Only for Marmite to go off on them again, sharp and persistent.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eggsy groans once he tears his mouth from Victor’s.

“I think he thinks you’re causing me pain,” Victor says, amused and frustrated all at once. “We should take this somewhere more accommodating.”

Eggsy’s room at Kingsman comes to mind. A nice bed close by. His own drawers discreetly stocked with at least the basic necessities for their intentions, not because he ever thought he’d get laid at Kingsman, but in case he ever needed to grab and go for whatever opportunities or necessities existed on the mission—or, if he were feeling hopeful, or maybe lonely, aside from it. What a marvelous idea. He presses a kiss to the corner of Victor’s mouth in gratefulness, which Victor chases and turns into something more prolonged and far filthier. “And Marmite?”

For once, Victor doesn’t leap to the defence of his rat, eyes lust blown, lips swollen. “He’ll be alright here for a bit.”

They try to be inconspicuous, sneaking down the halls when the coast is clear with expressions, to say nothing of appearances, that no doubt broadcast their intentions clear as a bell. Eggsy feels a bit too much like a teenager trying to sneak into a girl’s room late at night, has been doing a lot of things lately that aren’t fitting for a middle-aged man, but he’s drunk on something more potent than scotch and feeling _invulnerable_.

It’s more luck than skill that they encounter no one by the time Eggsy keys in the code to his room and pushes Victor into it only to have Victor drag him in after with such a firm yank on his wrinkled clothes, Eggsy barely has time to kick the door shut before Victor practically slams him against it, kissing him with a fierce abandon.

Safe behind a locked door, sans one alarmed rodent, a greater sense of urgency kicks in, fuelling his single-minded desire to squeeze his hands between their bodies divest Victor of that blasted tartan onesie, from knotted middle sash to all those fucking buttons, which, from what Eggsy can recall, had made needing to piss a trial of its own.

Victor attempts to help when Eggsy’s hands tremble too much to push all those damn buttons through, but it’s Eggsy who shoves the top half of the suit off his shoulders and practically tears the white cotton singlet off in order to take in what not even the water test had revealed: a slender but solid musculature that Victor’s genetically lanky frame couldn't escape from under truly hellish Kingsman conditioning, blanketed by unmarred pale skin and a smattering of dark hair stretched across the broad expanse of his chest and shoulders to the defined ridges of his abdominals.

For half a second, Eggsy wishes he had an older Harry’s frame to compare it to, but then, _no_ , this is all for _him_ , this fresh vision emblazoned forever upon his mind. The way the ridge of Victor’s sternum feels below his fingertips, and the hollow of his throat, the knobby protrusion of bone at his shoulders, the tendons of his neck, the surprisingly delicate shell of his ear.

Never let it be said that patience is among Victor’s virtues, shaking Eggsy from his transported bodily explorations by turning his head and pulling Eggsy’s fingers into his mouth like the shameless tease he apparently is now trying out to be.

More clothes are shed in trial and error fashion after that. Recruit footwear is a tricky thing, and the time it takes to unknot and unlace and unloosen produces twin bouts of disbelieving laughter. But after, Victor has less, overall, to remove while Eggsy is all layers of Kingsman gentlemanly armour that Victor takes a sort of concentrated pride in dismantling: tie, jacket, shirt, oxfords, belt, trousers and boxers in one eager pull, until Eggsy is bracketing Victor’s body, bare skin on skin, tasting and feeling whatever closest places of him are most accessible, his neck, shoulders, nipple, the top ladder of his ribs, back round to the perfect handfuls of his truly gorgeous arse.

But then Victor draws Eggsy up, enforcing a moment of separation in which the mutual once-over is performed: themselves, unnervingly laid bare in the bright afternoon sun for all they are.

He’s rarely ever been self-conscious about his body, but when confronted with Victor’s pristine youth, Eggsy is a collage of unsightly scars these days. They are badges of his fearlessness, but also recklessness, just a few too many to overshoot sexy intrigue and traverse well into questionable territory. He’s thicker set than he had been in his twenties, more stocky, more muscular, less of the wiry range that had plagued the hand-to-mouth existence of his youth. If he doesn’t get more serious about curbing his drinking, his gut will inevitably suffer for it soon.

And Victor...just _is_. His body, containing all that Eggsy holds dear, feels like a way station for two different lives.

If he’s an unsavoury sight, there’s nothing in Victor’s expression that gives any hint to it as his dark gaze pores over Eggsy’s body, and then slowly, wordlessly, he pushes at Eggsy’s shoulders to sit bare arsed on the edge of the bed. Before Eggsy can utter a question, he’s all long-limbed grace climbing into his lap, his pretty cock rubbing up against the underside Eggsy’s in such an enticing invitation than Eggsy can’t help but reach out and circle his hand around them both in a few idle strokes, thumbing over the wet, spongy heads, until Victor has to steal away the majority of his attention with more deep, open kisses, the all-consuming kind that feels like he’s trying to climb inside him and meld themselves together.

“God,” Eggsy whispers when his lips are so sensitised they’re practically numb, voice gone all raspy from his dried up mouth. “I knew you’d be pushy but—”

Victor lays a finger across his lips to silence him. “I’ve waited two lifetimes for this, and I’m not a patient man to begin with, you understand.”

“Then tell me what you want, and as a gentleman, I shall happily oblige.” Eggsy grins, then frowns as another thought occurs to him. “Do you want—”

Now that they both seem to be on the same wavelength, Victor is getting infuriatingly good at finishing his thoughts. “I’ve been a monk for the last six months and was clean before that. You?”

An image of Tilde immediately flashes across his mind and that monstrous purple cock that still resides in his drawers like an angry badger lying in wait to attack. “I’m clean. I haven’t...well. The only danger here would be making a mess for the cleaning staff.”

“I happen to like making messes.” Eggsy snorts. “I want to taste you,” Victor says, punctuating his demanding request with a kiss to the corner of Eggsy’s mouth, the underside of his jaw, and then, sinking from the mattress down to the floor, lower still, his chest, lips dragging over his stomach and hip.

There’s an intricate pattern on the wallpaper, a subtle emboss of fleur-de-lis, Eggsy realises. He never noticed before, not in all the time he’s been coming and going through this room. Some spy he is for only noticing now, but he makes up for it by focusing upon it intently, because the feel of Victor’s mouth, tongue, and nibbling teeth on the soft insides of his thighs, up to the sensitive crease, are like small branches of lighting up his skin and Victor's fingers skimming along the backs of his knees follow them up with shuddery traces of sensation. It makes Eggsy break into a sweat, makes his body tense up, he can barely stand it. There is an epicentre of pure need around which Victor deftly circles but doesn’t touch, only ever drawing close enough to breathe hotly against his cock before mercilessly moving away once more.

By some unspoken rule, Eggsy’s hands fist the duvet rather than his own cock as he so badly desires, or more accurately, to drag through Victor’s hair and direct him to where he’s being so neglectful. Even the wallpaper is starting to lose its fascination.

He finally breaks, shifting his hips, cock sliding along Victor’s cheek in a way that leaves an alluring wet line of precome behind like the most lurid warpaint. “Some of us _aren’t_ getting younger.”

A huff of laughter breaks against his leg. It makes him laugh too, and then moan, when Victor turns his head and swallows him down, no teasing, just silky wet heat for several bobs before pulling off to lap at the head, tongue his slit, enough to make Eggsy’s toes curl on the plush rug beneath his feet.

He doesn’t shoot off at the drop of a pin anymore, but Victor’s silvertongue is clever with more than just words, and more devastatingly still, he seems to know when finesse is overrated and applies the flat, wide surface of his tongue to the underside of Eggsy’s cock with deliciously blunt pressure, repeatedly up and down the length of him, in a way that pools the pleasure in his groin almost too hard and too fast.

“One could argue this is the best possible use for that mouth of yours,” Eggsy grits out, unable to keep from moving a hand to the back of Victor’s head to feel those soft wispy curls through his fingers, sensation-hungry as he is, or his hips from half-aborted little jerks upward into the hot cave of Victor’s mouth as everything inside him twists and tightens, balls to spine to the muscles in his calves, vibrating and waiting to burst.

When Victor pulls off, it’s nearly physically painful, producing a protesting hiss at the sudden cessation of heat and suction, the cool air hitting his cock, hovering at that very precipice only to be yanked back abruptly.

“Not nearly done with you yet,” Victor says hoarsely, looking just as wrecked, all flush cheeked and red, red lips wet and shining with spit.

“Do you...do you wanna….” Eggsy slurs, tongue thick and clumsy, brain cells not quite firing on all pistons at the moment, so he just waves a hand vaguely in what he hopes is in a meaningful way.

Victor, bless him, is well-versed in his incomprehensibility by now, using his long reach to open the bedside cabinet and retrieve condoms and lubricant, tossing them haphazardly in the middle of the bed. "For the mess."

“How—” Eggsy begins.

“I’m going to ride you.”

Eggsy blinks. “Okay.”

There’s a bit of shuffling and rearrangement involved, arse scooting further up on the bed, absurdly polite apologies for accidentally dislodging one’s knee and jostling the mattress, nearly causing disaster when his weak arm fails him and almost sends them both toppling off the bed entirely. It’s all decidedly cutting room floor material for anyone’s pornographic fantasy but terribly practical, because Eggsy is old enough where sensibility wins out over passion more often than not and Victor is literally an old man trapped in a younger man’s body, and, _well_.

But then the tone immediately pitches back towards anticipation like it had never been anything else when Victor straddles him, letting Eggsy’s aching prick rest between his plush cheeks in promise, slowly settling his weight over his hips, that final hot contact. Eggsy’s can’t keep himself from stroking the smooth skin of his thighs as an excuse to also close his fingers around the smooth length of his cock while making _so many plans_ on what to do with it in the future.

And while he’s been engrossed in mapping out all the places and ways that he and that dick would be intimately acquainted, Victor has squeezed out a liberal amount of lube on his fingers and his hand has disappeared behind him, the twitching hips, slack jaw and glazed expression in his eyes making it perfectly clear as to what he's doing.

His bicep flexes beautifully, like a rolling wave across the ocean’s surface that Eggsy follows, drawn in, until he traces the path of Victor’s arm with his own and meets his dripping wet fingers between the crevice of his cheeks, feeling them work in and out, pressing his index _in_ with them, sliding into an impossibly tight ring of heat along side Victor’s wrinked fingers, savouring the choked-off cry that falls from his lips.

Victor tips his head back, exposing the long, pale column of his bobbing throat. “Fuck.” 

“You’re so tight,” Eggsy says, adding his second finger and then forcing both his and Victors to curl up inside him, stroking, to produce the most gorgeous series of noises.

“Why, thank you.” Victor even manages to get it out with a touch of cheek, even if it’s swiftly undercut by a gasp as Eggsy adds his hand to Victor's cock while fingering him. “Oh God, you need to stop doing that or I won’t last.”

“I think you can handle it,” Eggsy tells him, filled with the immediate need to see him unravel.

He renews his efforts with more fervour, speeding up the stroke of his hands, both within and without, until Victor is writhing, his free hand braced against Eggsy’s chest, unsure of which direction to rock his hips, back onto Eggsy’s fingers, up into his fist. His whole body draws taut as a bow string, moans pushing out through clenched teeth as he comes over Eggsy’s stomach and chest in warm, wet spurts and practically collapses on top of him straight after, a shivering pile of limbs.

Eggsy removes his hands from in and on Victor’s body to run them along his slick back, accepting the hot condensation on his neck where Victor pants into it, marvelling at this creature in his arms, and wanting nothing more than to make him make those sounds again and again and again.

But first, this. He plants a foot on the bed, twists his knee, and rolls Victor onto his back, reversing their positions just slowly enough to not disorient, pressing his knees against Victor’s splayed thighs, pushing them obscenely wider. he retrieves the condom from the bed and tears it open with his teeth, then rolls it onto his needy cock and coats himself with a generous handful of lube.

“Are you...can you…?” he tries, pressing the head of his dick a little more against Victor’s loose, wet entrance just begging to be breached wider.

“Yes,” Victor sighs, bringing his heels up around Eggsy’s waist to dig in at the small of his back. “Yes.”

It’s all Eggsy needs to rock his hips forward and press in, immediately finding his cock enveloped in the hot vice of Victor’s body. Tight, still so absurdly tight even after everything. His suspicions only grow when he catches the pinched look Victor’s face, the way he grits his teeth in an effort to hold back his discomfort.

“Have you done this before?” Eggsy can’t help but ask.

“Many, many times,” Victor grunts, then adds, almost as an afterthought, “In a previous life.”

“Jesus, Victor that’s—” Alarmed, he starts to pull out and retreat, but Victor just tightens his legs around him like a clamp.

“So help me God, I will murder you if you stop.” He drags Eggsy down to look him in the eye, dark and serious in his threats. “I like it. I _want_ it.”

“Fine.” Eggsy leans in further to capture his lips in another kiss, “Yes, alright,” and Victor wraps his arms around his neck to keep him there.

He slowly and steadily fucks into Victor with shallow, gentle thrusts, swallowing each exhalation of breath forced from Victor’s mouth in this steady dance for what feels like hours in the spiralling heat of exertion.

“Alright?” he asks, pulling back just enough to scrutinise Victor’s face for any sign of growing discomfort or regret.

Victor opens his mouth, but no words form as Eggsy continuous to fuck shallowly into him, and he starts to wonder if he should stop again when he hears it, barely.

“ _Please_.”

And then, Victor just seems to open up all around him at once, something tense giving slack, and the glide becomes easier, an uninterrupted slide, all obscene wet slapping flesh and creaking bed, the drive to move faster becoming more urgent. Eggsy has to push himself up to his hands, then presses Victor’s legs further back to get at that right angle, fucking in deep and hard enough to make Victor cry out, really feel it.

By the time Victor’s cock is hard and red against his stomach, Eggsy feels like he’s barely holding it together himself, his skin porous, like all of him will simply burst open. He catches the manic glint in Victor’s eye, that bright shine, and isn’t prepared for the way Victor suddenly shifts his weight and nimbly flips them over again, almost to the other side of the bed, in a move that puts to good use all his recently learned grappling maneouvres.

It punches the wind from Eggsy’s lungs, his cock slipping free from Victor’s body, head swimming.

Victor looks down at him with familiar smug expression as he arranges himself over Eggsy to sink back down onto his cock in one agonisingly slow slide, pausing when he’s taken Eggsy in to the hilt and clenching as he grinds down.

“Fuck, you _tart_ —” is all Eggsy can say, bracing his hands over the slippery flexing bands of muscle along Victor’s back as he fulfills his earlier promise and begins to ride him in earnest with an intense look of focus on his face that Eggsy’s only seen when, say, flattening a group of thugs in a shitty pub or plowing through a church full of homicidal bigots.

It’s too much and not enough. He grabs Victor’s hips, begins fucking up into him in sharp counterpoint, no longer caring if they break the damn bed or that they’re making enough noise to be heard from down the hall, until whatever has been holding him together finally comes flying apart at the seams, only vaguely cognisant of Victor's stuttering rhythm on top of him, hand furiously bringing himself off into a second climax with a cry that adds to the tacky mess already smeared across his body.

Afterwards, Victor _still_ possesses more energy than he does: the first to recover his breath and shake off the sex-induced lassitude, to climb off of him and take care of the condom, giving them both a cursory wipe down with the duvet before pushing the whole disgusting thing off the bed, turning up the heat in the room using the over-complicated thermostat that Eggsy still hasn’t fucking figured out how to successfully operate in over twenty years, and returning to bed to draw the thin sheets up over their cooling bodies.

“Any regrets?” he finally asks, curling his limbs around Eggsy like a sloth. He asks it casually, but there’s a tension coiled in his limbs that’s not usually there.

Eggsy takes a moment to assess the state of himself: fucked out, in dire need of a shower, but beneath it all, quiet. “No.” It's said in half surprise. This feels settled, in its right place, maybe for the first time in his entire life, even when everything else is still very much up in the air and edging towards dire. “Honestly, I thought I’d have more. Maybe I should.”

Gradually, Victor relaxes. His fluffy hair, damp and heavier, tickles at Eggsy’s skin. “Me too.”

“So even if we fuck up everything else, which, with me, is at seventy-five percent guaranteed, then at least…perhaps….”

Victor raises his head to rest his chin on Eggsy’s chest and meet his eyes, arching one brow with all the suave eloquence of a silent film star. “All’s not lost?”

Eggsy fondly smiles, reaching up to tweak a wayward curl defying gravity atop Victor’s head and then to use it as a way to pull Victor forward, prefacing his answer with a slow, sweet kiss. “Something along those lines, yeah.”


	10. Chapter 10

_Do you still feel me? How many fingers does it take to feel like I’m inside you?_

_At least four well spread apart. Any more and I’d break my wrist. Don’t fancy explaining that one to medical._

_You doing it now?_

_Wouldn’t you like to know._

Eggsy leans against the side of an old Baroque-styled church in Milan, idly overhearing the conversations of passer-bys that are all ferociously passionate seemingly regardless of the actual subject matter and feigning reading very important work emails on his mobile while really just trading increasingly obscene texts with Victor.

 _You could show me_ , he types. _Warm me up while I stand around in this fucking cold._

_You do realise you’re using a work phone for highly inappropriate purposes?_

It’s such a pissy Harry thing to say that Eggsy grins.

At least he doesn’t have to pretend to enjoy a sip of his coffee, though, the only thing that’s keeping him warm out here while he waits. It’s fucking amazing coffee, bless Italy, he’d happily stay for the espresso alone.

“Heads up, Galahad,” Roxy’s voice breaks in just as he nearly succeeds in convincing Victor to send a few inspiring visuals, “target is on the move, heading your way.”

 _Just saying, if you sent, say, 8 dickpics I wouldn’t be mad about it xx_ , he taps out before slipping his mobile into his coat pocket and watching from the corner his eye as Daniele Branda walks past him, steps slinking and tired after a long shift as a security guard for LSE’s backup data centre. After counting five seconds, Eggsy regretfully tosses his still half-full cup away, pushes off the wall, and falls into step with the teeming crowds to trail after him.

If Eggsy hadn’t known what to look for, Branda could have easily blended into a crowd: average height and weight, not especially muscular. His hair is severely cut short despite the more trendy flowing locks on both the men and women around him. He moves almost disjointedly, in nervous fashion, like he must always remain alert against any threats. He had probably been very handsome twenty years ago, but a hard life had done its number. 

“I’ve got him,” Eggsy mutters quietly, jamming his hands into his coat pockets to ward off the chill.

Even if he didn’t have Branda so readily within within his sights, Eggsy has studied this man for so long he could probably pick him out of a lineup with his eyes closed. Forty-six years old, divorced, one son. His father is his only living parent, currently in failing health. He makes minimum wage as a security guard, which is barely enough to support himself, much less all the demands his ex-wife makes on him.

In other words, an easy payoff.

And now they had concrete evidence after weeks of surveillance on Danilo Sankovich: images of the two meeting at a local cafe.

It’s their first major break.

When Eggsy crosses the road at a busy intersection, Roxy simply slips in beside him like she had always been there without either of them missing a beat, gazes straight ahead, Branda always within view.

“So, you and Victor,” Roxy says, and of course it’s too much to ask this one time they could conduct a follow in dutiful silence.

“What about him?” Eggsy asks, playing dumb.

“Really? We’re doing this?”

They slow down to a dawdle at the corner across the street while Branda nips into a small eatery, likely picking up a quick supper to take home. Eggsy pegs him as the eat-in-front-of-the-telly type, the poor bastard.

“Well that didn’t take very long to get out.” Eggsy gives, almost throwing his hands up in the air before remembering they’re keeping a low profile here.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Roxy’s muted smirk. “You should know better than to conduct your trysts on Kingsman grounds.”

“How on earth did you and Arthur carry on for so long beneath everyone’s noses?”

“Simple.” Roxy shrugs. “I’m a better spy than you.”

Eggsy has to concede that point. “I take it you want to give me a lecture, but before you do, I’d just like to say in my defence that he’s no longer my recruit and he’s very...persistent. All of Harry’s impatience and none of his caution, it would seem. Like I ever had a chance.”

Roxy purses her lips and even dares to pull her gaze off the deli. “For the record, yes, I still think all of this is just screaming of impending heartbreak for all parties involved.” Eggsy’s shoulders sag and he scuffs at the cobblestones beneath his feet. “But then, what do I know? It’s taken me twenty-something years to get my act together.”

He pauses and looks up at her. “You mean...you and Arthur are…?”

Roxy rolls her eyes. “Yes, we’re making a go of it.”

Eggsy grins at her. “Just for that, I’m going to make it look like you just told me you’re pregnant while I move in to hug you.”

“You’re a wanker and I hate you,” Roxy says through her grimace, but suffers it anyway as Eggsy lifts her off her feet and swings her in a broad circle. “Not too much, you idiot! You’re going to attract all the bloody attention!”

Eggsy laughs loudly and giddily for anyone nearby to hear as he spots Branda exit the eatery and resume his journey home. “Target’s on the move.”

They pick up their shadowing as well, albeit a lot more closely than before. Eggsy slides an arm around Roxy’s waist and beams at her while Roxy lays her head on his shoulder, looking quietly pleased. At least until they turn the corner and are away from the initial crowd.

Once they don’t recognise anyone from the prior block, they detach and slide apart like mitosis.

Finally, Eggsy asks, “So what made you decide? You had some pretty strong reservations earlier.”

“I don’t really know, honestly. We’re both rationally minded and very good at assessing the odds. Great for staying alive in a high-risk profession, not so great for taking that leap of faith one often needs to make a go of it in love.”

“You mean…” Eggsy gapes at her. “For over twenty years, you two….”

Roxy just looks at him until Eggsy looks away first. So about the time he and Harry were feeling the sparks and giving each other cautiously interested looks (or, realistically, all but blatantly lust-filled invitations), Roxy and Percival were secretly making a pros and cons list and mutually reaching the same conclusion: objectively, it was a very bad idea. So they hadn’t.

“He was still grieving, and I was...I was still figuring out a lot of things. If we had got together back then, we would have quickly crashed and burned, I firmly believe that,” Roxy says. 

“So instead you buried your feelings and tried to be friends, and eventually you met John. Tried the whole family thing, because you’re a fucking overachiever who really thought you could have it all if only you just tried and believed hard enough,” Eggsy concludes, not that he can hold any judgment over her given he had thought the very same thing and failed twice as hard.

“All that caution and care, and for what? I’ve sacrificed so much for this life.” It’s said more as a statement of fact than regret, though they both surely had their fair share of them. “I’ve sacrificed friends and family. My marriage. My relationship with my children. I’m tired of having to give it all up. So. This is me being a little bit selfish now.”

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me,” Eggsy tells her, then after a moment of mulling it over, asks, “You think it would have been the same for Harry and I? If Harry hadn’t died and we threw all those last misgivings to the wind and tried it?”

“Probably,” Roxy says. “From what you’ve told me, you two had serious issues and not an ounce of common sense between you. It would have been a disaster.”

“You make it sound like things have changed so much now.”

“Haven’t they? You’re older. You possess more distance and wisdom, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.” Roxy gives him a flat look that pithily summarises a lifetime’s worth of follies. “You know what it’s like to be in his shoes now. You’ve had time to become your own man outside what Harry wanted for you.”

“You know, for a hot second there, after Victor remembered, I _was_ that angry young boy all over again, ashamed of having failed the man I looked up to,” Eggsy admits. “Like all those years and missions and hard lessons learned hadn’t mattered.”

“And now?”

“Now...it’s better,” Eggsy says, realising he was now able to obtain some perspective after taking a step back and seeing the whole of his life, from how it began to where he is today. “You’re right: I’m not that same person anymore. I don’t know if I’m someone who would have turned out better if Harry had lived and gone on to really mould me into the man he thought I could be, but I’ve muddled through somehow.”

“That man wouldn’t have really been you, though, would it? Regardless of all the things I’ve said, you haven't done half bad, given all this life’s thrown at you,” Roxy assures him, meaning it, which touches him more than he expects. “But more importantly, you made your own decisions, for good or for ill.”

“You too, you know. But then, you were always better at this than I was,” Eggsy says, sharing her soft smile as he idly notes that Branda has reached his rundown little building and disappeared through the front door to make the final leg to his three-storey walk-up. “Ready, Lancelot?”

“Always, Galahad.”

Eggsy walks into the small foyer of the building, Roxy close behind, where it’s slightly warmer than indoors, though not by much. They listen to Branda’s feet navigating the narrow staircases above them as they start their own ascent, careful to time their footsteps to their target’s.

Eggsy pulls out his pistol and waits until Branda unlocks his door before rushing up behind him, digging the barrel into the back of his skull and shoving him through the doorway into his tiny flat.

Branda’s a fighter, Eggsy will give him that. The man would rather let his dinner spill across the floor so he can knock Eggsy’s gun aside and turn around with a balled fist, but Eggsy is ready to test out his newly healed elbow by throwing it into his face. Stunned, Branda staggers back, clutching the front of his face as Eggsy follows, keeping his gun aimed at him while Roxy checks to see if they’ve drawn any notice before quietly shutting the door.

“Sit,” Eggsy barks, pointing at the ratty little chair parked in front of the cheap little telly. His earlier predictions hadn’t been so off the mark after all.

“I don’t have anything to steal!” Branda protests as he grudgingly does as ordered. “I don’t have any money!”

“We’re not here to rob you, Mr Branda. We’re here because of your association with this man,” Eggsy says as he pulls out his phone, tries not to react to the, indeed, _series_ of photos Victor has sent him in the meantime that are extremely relevant to his interests, and pulls up Sankovich’s picture to show him instead.

Branda leans forward and squints at the image. “Danilo?” His brows raise in bewilderment. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“He’s paying you to give him access to the London Stock Exchange’s backup data centre,” Eggsy says impatiently, pocketing his phone once more.

“No,” Branda immediately denies. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Eggsy casually flips the safety off his gun. “Stop lying. We’ve been monitoring Sankovich for weeks. We witnessed your little meeting a few days ago. How much is he giving you in exchange for access?”

“Please, Mr Branda,” Roxy implores gently but insistently. “Sankovich is a dangerous man. He’s been involved in more than a hundred bombings in the last two and a half decades. We just want to stop him before he can cause any more damage and lives.”

“We know you’re just a hapless bystander to all this. A little down on his luck? In need of a bit more cash? Who wouldn’t be tempted? Cooperate with us now and we’ll go easy on you,” Eggsy says. “Don’t and we’ll consider you just as guilty as he is and treat you accordingly.”

Fear joins the confusion in Branda’s eyes as he looks between Roxy’s pleading face and Eggsy’s hard one. “Please, I do not know what you mean. Danilo would not do these things. He is my old friend! We were just meeting for the first time in years! He did not pay me to do this! We are friends!”

Eggsy is starting to get a sinking feeling about all this. When he meets Roxy’s gaze, he knows she’s feeling similarly. “Explain.”

“Look, look, I can show you!” Branda leaps up, causing both Eggsy and Roxy to tense, but he only moves to a cheap shelf in the corner and brings back a small picture frame. “This is me and Danilo when we were boys! My father was a professional photographer. We lived in Croatia when I was young and his family lived next to mine. We became good friends. Very best of friends. See?”

The photograph is old and faded, but nevertheless depicts two young boys standing side by side, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, smiling at the camera. There could be no mistake: even thirty years younger, Sankovich’s lopsided features are easily identifiable.

“He never asked you to do anything related to your place of employment?” Eggsy has to confirm, glaring up from the photo to Branda.

“No! No, never! He just stopped in! Said he was in Milan for a little while and wanted to catch up.”

“And you don’t know anything about his criminal activities?” Eggsy persists.

“Of course not! He is a good, kind man,” Branda ardently defends. “Where is the proof he has done the things you say?”

Damn it all, but Eggsy knows Branda is telling the truth. He turns to Roxy, “Check to see if Sankovich has tagged him with anything.” Then, to Branda, “Do you still have your IDs? Your workplace access cards? Is there anything on your person or in your flat that could be used to gain access to your place of employment were it robbed?”

“I’m getting no signal off him or anything within the flat,” Roxy reports, a hand touching the frames of her glasses.

“I have all my documents here,” Branda says, digging them out of his pockets to show Eggsy, and indeed they seem to be all accounted for: ID access card to the data centre and EU identity card. “They never left my pocket!”

Eggsy wants to kick something. Instead he flips his gun’s safety back on and runs his hand through his hair in frustration. It had been such a strong lead too. “Sankovich could have somehow copied the access pass and returned it without Branda knowing.”

But Roxy just shakes her head. “We had eyes on the whole meet, neither Sankovich or anyone else got close enough to do that.”

“Fuck!” Eggsy gives in and smacks his fist against the wall. Another dead end.

Sankovich is wily. He had to be paranoid enough to think he was being monitored closely. It’s how he managed to elude the authorities for decades. Perhaps he set this whole thing up with his old childhood friend as a red herring. If the authorities questioned an oblivious Branda, they would learn nothing and Sankovich would undoubtedly be tipped off when Branda came to him in confusion thereafter.

But that’s what happened when the authorities became involved. Not Kingsman. 

He turns back to Branda. “Do you think you’ll see him again anytime soon?”

“Yes,” Branda says, surprising Eggsy and Roxy. “Next Wednesday. He asked me to take the day off work and spend the day with him.”

“Thank you, Mr Branda, you’ve been very helpful,” Roxy says as she raises her watch and doses him with an amnesia dart, sending him toppling from his chair to the questionably clean floor.

Over his fallen body, Roxy and Eggsy share a look. So at least they now had a deadline and a way to apprehend Sankovich himself, if not the people he’s recruited to perform his dirty work nor the means in which they are to do it. One step closer, but the end goal is still so very far out of reach and time is running out.

 

_____

 

Given their busy schedules, it’s exceedingly rare for Arthur to assemble the Kingsman again so soon, especially when that reason doesn’t concern a death or new inductee. Looking around the table—just four agents physically present today, the rest calling in via their glasses—Eggsy can see how the rest of the knights are curious as to why they’ve been brought in for the second time in as many weeks.

Arthur had given him warning of his intentions the night before, which ostensibly left Eggsy a solid eight hours to prepare his arguments, but in reality had only served to work him into an anxious wreck that not even Victor’s mightiest stress-reducing efforts could completely erase.

“I’ve called this meeting,” Arthur begins, “on behalf of a proposal put forth by Galahad that I believe is worth discussing. It shall require a vote by the entire Table. Galahad?”

At once, Eggsy feels the weight of their scrutiny like a firing a squad, not least of which is Merlin’s from his sentinel-like position in the corner of the room. He clears his throat and pushes his chair back a little to stand, compelled to do this as formally as he could lest he betray too much of his own personal stake in the matter.

“Thank you, sir. What I wanted to propose is creating a new position for the Table, and furthermore, awarding it to Victor Arden, the runner-up in our Bors trials.”

Predictably, a heavy wave of scepticism and even incredulity goes around, with Bors herself narrowing her eyes at Eggsy from the opposite end of the table.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but this isn’t just about me wanting Kingsman to bend the rules to favour my candidate, though he's an _excellent_ one,” Eggsy says quickly. “How many agents have we lost since V-Day versus the two decades prior to it? Outside of World War II, these past few years have been the deadliest for Kingsman, mostly due to longstanding or increasingly unstable geopolitical situations from the V-Day fallout.”

He can’t help meeting Merlin’s eyes just then. They both had a direct hand in creating the atmosphere that still exists today, regardless of their limited choices at the time. It is something they would both have to live with for the rest of their lives.

“We had to upend a lot of traditions after that. Many of you are too young to remember, of course, but we did, and we did so in order to become better. More accountable, more agile. More reflective of the new era. I know traditions keep us comfortable, but at what cost?” Eggsy asks, making sure to meet the eyes of each and every knight. “There should be more of us out there, not less. Exclusivity is a detriment, not something to take pride in, not when we have talented, brave people who want to help shape the world if only we’d just give them the chance.”

“While I can see the merits of adding a new position, Galahad,” Gawain says. “I don’t see why it has to be your candidate. He failed a critical test.”

“It’s the same test I once failed,” Eggsy says boldly, creating a ripple of shock aside from Roxy, Merlin, and Arthur. everyone else in the room had come in after V-Day, and there certainly was never reason to publicise this fact until now. “And I had less of an excuse for failing it than Victor.”

“And what excuse is that?” Bedivere asks.

 _He remembered he was a Kingsman agent who could run circles around the lot of you_. But of course, Eggsy can’t say that. “He was interrupted before he could even take the test, so technically, he hasn’t actually been given a chance to complete the challenge, not that I want to contest Bors’s rightfully earned place. Hence the new position.”

He very intentionally doesn’t look in Angeline’s direction.

“Technically?”

“Merlin was there. He can attest to it,” Eggsy says, directing everyone’s attention to the corner of the room, visibly catching Merlin off guard.

Merlin glares at him, and Eggsy tries to wordlessly convey his apologies with a look, but he’s not above using any angle he has to, including everyone’s unquestioning faith in Merlin’s judgment. His good opinion would go far in persuading the rest, and even though he’d been reticent about Victor so far, Eggsy knows, deep down, Merlin won’t let his friend down in the end.

“Is this true, Merlin?” Percival asks.

 _Tell them_ , Eggsy silently urges him. _Tell them the truth. Well, some of it_.

“I try not to insert my own preconceived notions into such critical matters. I’d rather the recorded footage speak for itself,” Merlin says. With a few taps to his tablet, a video begins to play in the transformed portrait over the fireplace.

And just like that, Eggsy watches himself and Victor pitted across from each other in Merlin’s private office, Victor holding a gun on him, himself looking absolutely stupefied and more than a little pissed off.

 _Do what you have to do_ , video him says, defiant to the end.

He notices the small tremour travel through Victor’s hands only because he’s looking for it. The whole encounter had felt a lot longer at the time, but it all goes by very quickly now.

Victor’s eyes widen. His whole body tenses as if he has been struck by lightning. The gun falls from his hands as he clutches his head and whimpers in a way Eggsy had missed the first time.

Video him starts forward, concerned. _Are you—_

 _No, I can’t do this,_ Victor groans out before stumbling out of the room.

 _Well. That’s that then,_ Merlin’s voice says before the video ends.

It looks like...well, it looks rather bad out of context, doesn’t it?

Eggsy’s cheeks feel hot with humiliation, but the rest of him is simply numb.

The rest of the agents are silent, avoiding looking at him. Some are surely embarrassed on his behalf. He can practically Roxy’s smothering sympathy from across the table and can barely stand it.

“Do with that what you will,” Merlin says, meeting Eggsy’s eyes in challenge, and the feeling that gradually settles into his bones is hot, hot anger.

That fucking _bastard_.

Eggsy will never, _ever_ forgive him for this.

“...I suppose we should have a vote, then,” Arthur finally says, subdued, for even the king knows the limits of his power.

There’s no saving this one now.

 

_____

 

As soon as Eggsy steps through the door to his home, Victor is on him.

“Thank _God._ I was so incredibly bored.” The lapels of Eggsy’s jacket are crumbled up in Victor’s hands as he yanks him forward into a hungry kiss that easily knocks Eggsy’s brain offline for a few precious moments. “This is the longest I’ve done without having something to do in lifetimes now, isn’t it?”

Victor doesn’t wait for Eggsy to voice his response on the matter, too busy disassembling his suit and tie and mouthing at the line of Eggsy’s neck, little hot, wet pinpoints that feel like sparks of electricity singeing up his spine that Eggsy lets continue for too long before finally finding the will to speak.

“Victor.” It takes a few times, each iteration growing stronger until he braces his palms on Victor’s shoulders and holds him back. “Victor.”

Victor just stares at him, flushed, aroused, and cross. “What?”

“I tried,” he says, and then is unable to get the rest of the words out, they stick in his throat. “I tried to make a case and….”

It’s enough, though, for Victor to understand, or maybe there’s something in his eyes that says it all, because Victor backs off of his own volition, hands dropping from Eggsy’s chest to fold around himself. “Oh.”

The forlorn sight breaks something loose inside of Eggsy. All his anger reignites, hot and bright. “I was sandbagged. Merlin showed the footage from the test. There was no way I could explain it for what it was, so it looked like...it looked like….”

“Like I couldn’t do what needed to be done,” Victor says, nodding. “Clever of Merlin.”

“He’s a bastard.”

“I think he may well and truly hate me,” Victor muses.

“He languishes in his misery because he doesn’t know of any other way to live,” Eggsy spits out, yanking off his tie and tossing it somewhere in the direction of the couch before kicking off his shoes and taking satisfaction in how they smack into the walls. “And he can’t stand to see anyone else not be miserable too!”

“You mustn’t be too hard on him. He did what he thought was best for everyone.”

It pulls Eggsy up short. He stares at Victor in disbelief, almost hurt. “He boxed you out, Victor. He put the final nail in the coffin. Don’t you get it? You’re not going to be a Kingsman! You failed! You’re _out_!”

The colour flushes high in Victor’s cheeks, his eyes flashing in surly defiance and his jaw clenching reflexively. “Then I’m not going to be a Kingsman!” he shouts back. It's the first time he’s ever raised his voice at Eggsy, and it throws him. “So bloody what? I’m still here! I’ve still got a life to lead! Or is that the only thing you wanted me for? If I’m not a Kingsman, then what use am I? Is that it? I failed the fucking test so I’ve now failed you?”

“No!” Eggsy snarls. “I’ve fucking failed _you_ again!”

His voice rings in his own ears, chest heaving, like he’s just run a straight mile, chasing a target. And then suddenly, he’s just tired. _Exhausted_. Fight all gone out of him at once. He sags against something, a load-bearing column as it would happen, and exhales, staring down at his socked feet and the grain of the wooden floorboards.

“Then make it up to me.”

Eggsy blinks and looks up, not sure if he’s heard right, but Victor just stares at him archly. “What?”

“You heard me.” Victor steps forward, again and again, until he’s right up against Eggsy, lifting a hand to dig his fingers through Eggsy’s hair, gentle at first, then getting in a good hard grip, pulling his head back to tip his face up. “Make it up to me.”

There’s something dark and heated in those eyes, maybe just a little bit playful too, and despite all Eggsy’s frustration and weariness, there will always be a part of him that soothingly unfurls to Victor’s touch, wanting to arch and writhe against him like a cat. “What would you have me do?”

“First,” Victor says, like he’s organising a mental list, “I want you to kiss me.” A small smile curls at the corners of his lips. Eggsy can’t help but touch them with his thumbs, smearing them to the edges of his jaw. “And then you can blow me. And then you can fuck me. And then, we’ll go from there.”

“Is that going to be your solution for everything?” Eggsy asks, still trying and failing to hold on to his annoyance. “Fuck your problems away?”

“Why not?” Victor counters, turning his head so Eggsy can swipe at his lower lip, slip his finger inside and let Victor’s lips briefly suction around it. “If I’m to have all this free time, I’d rather spend it doing what I love most.”

When Eggsy leans forward to fulfill Victor’s first directive, Victor happily accepts restitution, pressing into him, opening up to him, consuming him. And then Eggsy hears the telltale clicking of claws on the floor.

Oh, fuck no.

He pulls back just enough to propose, “Bedroom?” Ready to pick Victor up and haul him forcibly behind the the safety of a closed door if he has to.

Fortunately, Victor is with him, nodding in agreement. “Right, quickly now, before he _sees_.”

Later, Eggsy finds himself flat on his back, staring at his ceiling. A sheet barely covers his sated, sore body, the sweat just starting to cool off his skin. He’s well and truly shagged out in mind and body. Perhaps Victor had the right idea all along. Fuck Kingsman and fuck Merlin and just keep on fucking, he supposes.

Victor reclines along his side beside him, head propped up in one hand while the other idly strokes along Eggsy’s chest, half-adoring and half-teasing. With a start, Eggsy realises that he’s also half hard against his hip. _Honestly_.

“God,” Eggsy groans, running his hands down his face. “ _Still_? You came twice already!”

“I’m physically in my twenties and think about getting off near constantly,” Victor surmises. “It’d be exhausting if I didn’t seem to have tireless amounts of energy to go along with it.”

“Swear to God, even I wasn’t this bad when I was your age,” Eggsy mutters.

“I highly doubt that.” Victor pushes himself up to straddle Eggsy, leaning down over him. “Can I fuck you?”

Eggsy’s hands come up easy over his hips to brace him. He takes a mental inventory of his body and then shrugs. “Yeah, sure, why not? Won’t be able to get off again, but it’ll feel nice.” He pats Victor’s thigh. “You’ve got to do all the work though, you bloody machine. I’m knackered.”

Victor grins and shuffles down his legs while Eggsy splays them wider to give him room, shoving a pillow beneath his hips and bending his knees to dig his heels into the mattress. He closes his eyes and throws an arm over his face to black out any hint of light bleeding in through his eyelids. That’s about all the help he’s got left in him to do.

He feels more than sees Victor going about, fetching the lube from where Eggsy had earlier tossed it (the floor, as it turns out), hearing the click of the cap being snapped open, the filthy squirt of liquid being squeezed out from the tube, and then two fingers circle his hole.

“Alright?” Victor asks.

“You can put them right in. Trust me, it’s well-charted territory.”

Victor huffs out a laugh and does as he’s told.

Eggsy sighs. God, Victor’s fingers are so long. He’d forgotten about that. They feel wonderful stroking up inside him, easily pressing up against his prostate and coaxing little warm tendrils of pleasure that spread all throughout his body. His cock doesn’t so much as twitch, but it feels lovely to grind his hips down on those fingers anyway. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah? There’s more where that came from. You take them very easily,” Victor says in wonder. “Just how much practise have you had?”

“There’s a time and place to talk about our previous bed partners,” Eggsy moans, rocking his hips back onto Victor’s fingers, “but it’s not while you’ve got three fingers in my arse.”

Just for that, Victor pulls out his fingers no matter how much Eggsy clenches around them to get them to stay. He doesn’t have to mourn their loss for long though, because then there’s a bit more shuffling and a crinkle of foil before his leg is slung up over Victor’s shoulder and then the larger, blunt head of Victor’s cock is pressing into him in a sweet, slow burn.

When Victor’s all the way seated, Eggsy removes his arm from his face and blinks up at Victor, feeling full, maybe a little more overwhelmed than he expected.

“Good?” Victor asks, trying not to look wrecked, but his eyes involuntarily flutter as he gives a small, languorous thrust that lights Eggsy all up on the inside.

Eggsy licks his lips. “Yeah. Very good. Just keep fucking me slow for awhile.”

Victor does as he’s ordered, hips rocking slow and sure in gentle waves that Eggsy could sink into like a hammock.

“Eggsy.”

Eggsy looks up blearily at him. Poor Victor is all checked exertion now, trying to maintain his sedate rhythm when his poor hot-blooded and magnificent young body is probably demanding he move faster.

“Why is there a massive purple dildo in your dresser?”

Stunned, Eggsy’s mouth gapes open while Victor just keeps fucking him through it, the little fucking shit. 

Then there’s the slightest crack in his expression, a glimmer of humour caught in his eyes.

“Oh, fuck off,” Eggsy says, but he can’t help the peal of laughter that starts deep in his belly and shakes his whole frame.

It sets Victor off too, sniggering into his shoulder when he can barely hold himself up anymore, and Eggsy feels the vibrations of his mirth both from within and without.

“Shit, come on,” Eggsy tries, digging into Victor’s shoulder with his heel. “You’re supposed to be fucking me with solemnity. My arse is a momentous occasion.”

It takes a few more tries, but eventually, they both calm down enough to get back down to it, Victor taking the opportunity to adjust the angle of his hips so that his thrusts hit at an absolutely divine angle, making Eggsy’s body tremble in spite of itself.

“But seriously, why?” Victor asks because he’s too stubborn for his own good.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Eggsy grunts, fists clenching at the sheets below him, “if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Fine,” Eggsy gives up, resigned. “It’s not actually mine. It’s the Queen of Sweden’s.”

There’s a stutter in Victor’s rhythm, but like a trooper, he keeps at it. “You’re having me on.”

“See? Told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Victor doesn’t respond in words so much as picks up the pace, making Eggsy dissolve into a mess of incoherent moaning.

And then, unbelievably, he feels a low stirring in his cock, a twitch of interest. Eggsy opens his eyes and stares at it like it’s a traitor.

Victor must see it too because he looks positively devilish.

“No. Don’t you _dare_ ,” Eggsy says, but the rest of what he wants to say is lost when Victor fucks in especially hard and all the words dry up in his mouth.

After that, it’s all intense concentration and heavy panting as the sweat starts beading across Eggsy’s skin anew and his cock slowly, impossibly hardens once more.

“Shit,” Eggsy grits out, throwing his head back against the pillows, feeling like he wants to claw his prickly skin off. “Shit, shit, shit.” It’s practically _painful_. “Come _on_.”

His hand blindly reaches out to grasp Victor’s pistoning hips. 

“Just like that,” Victor says, smoothing his palm down Eggsy’s chest and belly, ending with wrapping around his oversensitive cock to start stroking it in time with his own thrusts. “Come on. You can do it for me, can’t you?”

God help him, but _yeah_ , yeah he’s going to come again. Eggsy can feel it drawing up and pooling low in his groin, tightening in his balls, something growing bigger and bigger inside of him until it can no longer be contained.

“Oh, fuck. _Fuck_ ,” he swears as his climax swallows him up and he shoots off onto his own quivering stomach.

At some point in that hazy period of post-climax time, Victor must come too, because his thrusts grow jerking and uneven until he collapses onto Eggsy, unconcerned with the mess, hips still slowly rutting like they have a life of their own.

“That was horrible,” Eggsy sighs contentedly when the little aftershocks taper down, bringing his arms to wrap around Victor and hold him like he’s afraid he’ll lose him again. “Let’s not ever do that again.”

“I’ll make note of it,” Victor slurs, turning his head to tenderly kiss the underside of Eggsy’s jaw.

After three orgasms, Victor can finally achieve a state of being all but dead to the world, barely cognisant enough to take care of the condom before crawling back into bed to sling an arm over his messy, sticky middle, curling up against him and falling immediately into a deep sleep.

And now Eggsy is wide awake, still running off the endorphin high of his last climax. Fucking figures.

Giving up on sleep, he cranes his neck and spies his glasses teetering on the edge of the bedside table. With a bit of reach, he snags his ring finger beneath the bridge of the frames and hauls them up, slipping them over his nose and pulling up everything they’ve managed to gather so far on the bombings, Sankovich, and the Milan centre.

Sankovich made his bombs in whatever rat holes he burrowed in, but coordinated with others to actually carry out the bombings. He apparently cared enough about his old childhood friend not to directly implicate him in what he was about to do and even to get him far away from the site of imminent explosion when it happened. All the other guards and centre staff checked out. No one rose any red flags. All of them have been working for the centre for years now and even the former employees hadn’t departed under particularly egregious circumstances.

Except.

Eggsy frowns and has to scroll through a dizzying amount of text and dates projected before him to find what he’s looking for, but when he does, he wants to smack himself in the face repeatedly.

Except for the BCP company the LSE contracts with that was brought in to migrate the data servers. That has their own permanent staff who were vetted, but has also been known to contract out especially large jobs. Most of the time, the consultants didn’t need to physically be onsite to do their work, so they hadn’t been on Kingsman’s radar, but it just so happened there was an in-person visit scheduled for next Wednesday.

What a coincidence, that.

 

_____

 

On the day of reckoning, Kingsman goes out in full force, though of course not a member of the public would ever know it. A team infiltrates the centre’s security guards to stop and search every vehicle that passes in or out of the centre, which ends up yielding fuck all, much to Eggsy’s consternation.

“Nothing on the latest vehicle,” Merlin says in his ear. “Just the HVAC company doing maintenance cleaning and the IDs check out, but Cat is double-checking their backgrounds to be sure. No sign of the company car yet.”

Eggsy runs a hand through his hair and smacks his head against his head rest. He has a feeling this is going to be another ruse. “Shit.”

Roxy and him are monitoring the operation from inside one of the cars in the data centre’s car park, even though it makes him feel restless to simply _sit_ outside of all the action. Not that there’s any to be had.

“How the bloody hell are they doing it?” he asks aloud.

Roxy is silent for a long time, a line between her brows signalling her mind is at work. “Maybe...they’ve been doing it all along.” And when Eggsy frown, she quickly explains, “They haven’t been onsite all that much, but they _have been_. Two prior occasions, in fact. What if...they had brought in the bomb components and assembled them within the data centre under everyone’s noses? We were so busy looking into the LSE staff, we didn’t even worry about the consultants they hired out.”

“If that’s true, then...there’s a bomb currently sitting in the server room of this very building,” Eggsy states, just so they’re all clear on how dire the situation is. “Probably hidden. And if it fits the pattern of prior devices, it may be nearly impossible to detect.”

“Nearly impossible, but not completely so,” Merlin says with a mysterious air of grudging annoyance.

It piques Eggsy’s curiosity to say the least. “What do you mean?”

“We may have been preparing for this occasion ever since Basingstoke,” Roxy says a bit guiltily. “The bombs escaped any modern detection methods, so we had to return to older tried and true methods.”

“Which are?”

“Beta Team, can you hear me?” Roxy says to whoever she’s talking to.

“Loud and clear, Lancelot,” a familiar voice returns. _Angeline_.

“Meet us on level D8 if you please.”

“Copy that.”

“Let it be known this was all Lancelot’s idea,” Merlin grouses while they wait. “While I find the whole notion completely ridiculous.”

Eventually an unmarked white van pulls up before them that is being driven by Angeline, wearing a generic maintenance uniform with most of her hair hidden beneath a black snapback. She climbs out of the driver’s seat and immediately rounds the van to open up the back doors, spilling out a pack of _Pugs_. His Pugs.

“Fuck me,” Eggsy says, immediately clambering out of the car. The Pugs recognise him immediately and circle him en masse, corkscrew tails wagging, ugly scrunched up faces split into big grins and lolling pink tongues. He can’t help but kneel down and let himself be swarmed. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’ve been training them to sniff out the certain unique chemicals Sankovich uses in his bombs,” Roxy explains as she exits the car and approaches the pack. “Hence, bomb-sniffing dogs.”

Merlin feels the need to add, “Pugs aren’t particularly great at sniffing out much of anything due to their compressed muzzles and the well-documented congestion problems of the breed—”

“As it turns out, procuring the number of Bloodhounds or Beagles we would have needed was more difficult than expected, so we had to work with what we had,” Roxy reluctantly admits. “But even a Pug’s nose is significantly more sensitive than a human’s, and they all proved particularly adept at finding these trace chemicals when adequately motivated by reward.”

“Do you hear that, my dog children?” Eggsy tells his Pugs, giving them all rewarding scritches. “You _are_ useful creatures. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Everyone grab a lead and take a Pug. We need to canvas the entire centre, with a concentration in the server room itself,” Roxy instructs to the men also flowing out of the van’s bed.

The last of them turns out to be Victor himself, wearing a pair of familiar Kingsman glasses that are distressingly fitting on him.

Eggsy slowly rises, eyeing the black tactical gear he wears, which also make him look especially handsome. “What’s this?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I’m apparently at least still qualified to wrangle the occasional dog,” Victor says.

“I asked for him,” Bors says, stunning Eggsy with the friendly smile she sends in Victor’s direction, one that he mirrors. Huh. “I’ve trained with him. I know how good he is. I trust him with my life.”

“You’re cute with your mouth hanging open like that, gives me all sorts of terrible ideas,” Victor says, cupping said slack jaw to close Eggsy's mouth and place a light but lingering kiss on his lips.

“Let’s keep it professional, boys,” Roxy says as she slots herself between them and shoves a lead each into Victor’s and Eggsy’s hands. “Galahad, you have the car park. Victor, come with me.”

“Guess it’s time to save capitalism, if not exactly the world,” Victor says.

“Go get ‘em, tiger.” Eggsy winks, giving his very muscular chest a good luck grope.

The Kingsman and Kingsman Pug Bomb Squad depart, only looking a little ridiculous. Eggsy sets forth with his own trusty companion, one of the senior dogs named Maxwell, though Eggsy privately calls him Horace because all his greying fur is concentrated on his chin, making him look like a some sort of Greek philosopher, or whatever.

But Pugs turn out to be rather distractible dogs, Eggsy comes to find as he allows Horace to meander down the lines of cars, leading Eggsy down several diversions to:

  1. consume a small pile of crushed crisps 
  2. chase after a mouse
  3. attempt to eat a tube of lipstick



“No, Horace, no!” Eggsy pries open the dog’s jaws to fish the slobber-coated plastic from his mouth. He shakes out his hand in disgust and gives the dog an exasperated look. “Not exactly top of the class, were we, old boy?”

“I think we found something!” Roxy cuts in.

Eggsy switches the view in his glasses to feed him Roxy’s camera and swears. They’ve unscrewed the side panel of a massive server tower whose insides have almost entirely been replaced by Sankovich's bomb.

The timer, a bold red digital display, counts down from fifteen minutes.

“Bloody hell,” Eggsy whispers.

“Bors, start evacuating the centre,” Roxy commands, ever maintaining her cool head. “Michael, Tom, you’re on crowd control. Merlin, can we disarm it? Judging by the amount of C4 here, this thing could take out the whole city block.”

“Give me a good look at what we’re dealing with,” Merlin instructs, and after Roxy makes a slow scan of the entire span of the bomb’s components, he begins typing away, only to make a noise of frustration a moment later. “I used to see these types of parts in the last century. Terrorist don’t make these kinds of bombs anymore, though. Too risky unless you really know what you’re doing. It’s going to take some time to pull up our records and—”

“If you’ll pardon the interruption, Merlin,” Victor suddenly says. “But I’m familiar with the type of bomb we’re dealing with.”

“How do you—”

“It’s just like Serbia, 1990, remember?” Victor says, leaving Merlin speechless. “I know how to disarm it, if you’ll make a hole, please.”

Eggsy switches over to Victor’s view and watches him push through the others to access the intricate tangle of wires and circuit boards.

“Victor, are you sure….” he begins, wanting nothing more than to scream at him to _leave_ , get out with everyone else.

“It’s fine. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it before,” Victor says confidently, his hands sure and careful as he begins the delicate process of carefully identifying and separating the right connections he needs to cut and rewire. “You just have to keep the current running to certain parts while _very_ carefully dismantling the ones that lead to the incendiary bits.”

It seems like everyone collectively holds their breath as they watch Victor work. It’s as tedious as brain surgery and feels just as long. But Victor’s hands never once shake or pause as he snips wires here, strips them of their rubber coatings, and twists others together.

The timer continues to tick by the seconds, which turn into minutes, which then turn into perilously _less_ minutes, 13, then 10, then eight, then _seven_.

“Maybe you all should think about evacuating the—” Eggsy begins, but he’s sharply interrupted by Victor’s, “ _Got it_.”

The timer stops at 07:32:09.

Roxy is the first to speak in the ensuing stunned silence. “He did it.”

Eggsy practically collapses against a car, relieved. “Christ, you are so getting laid tonight. As many times as you’d like. Any hole.”

“And there goes that heartwarming moment,” Roxy says.

“The bomb is disarmed,” Merlin confirms like he still can’t believe it. “ _Harry_.”

“It’s about time, you old goat,” Victor says warmly.

“Harry?” Bors asks.

“It’s a long story,” Roxy tells her, “But maybe if we want to rethink that new Kingsman position, you should hear it.”

“ _I’m so sorry_.” Merlin’s voice is positively broken, sounding unlike Eggsy has ever heard him: desolate, guilty.

“Don’t be. I would have done the same were I in your position, my friend,” Victor assures, more charitable than Eggsy could ever be.

He’s so bloody overwhelmed with the roller coaster of emotions coursing through him—elation, joy, victory, relief, wistfulness for all that lost time and opportunity—that at first he fails to notice how Horace keeps tugging at his lead, straining for something.

It’s only when Horace starts barking loudly that Eggsy pays sharper attention, letting the dog drag him over to the car that is second from the end with a mounting dread. It’s an old beat-up thing that otherwise looks innocuous except for the way Horace keeps clawing and sniffing at its tyres, whining.

And then Eggsy peers into the back seat. “Fucking hell.”

The chattering on the other end is cut short as they all pipe into Eggsy’s view.

“No,” Victor breathes.

“ _Shit_ ,” Roxy declares.

The entire back seat of the car has been cleared out to make room for a second bomb. There's only six minutes left on the counter.

“Merlin, Victor,” Eggsy says faintly. His voice feels very far away. “Is there time to disarm it?”

“I don’t….” Merlin begins, but can’t finish, the first time he’s ever done that too. A day of firsts, it would seem.

“The car park is right over the server room,” Eggsy recalls from the blueprints. “When this thing goes, it’ll bring everything on top of the servers anyway, to say nothing of how much it’ll take out topside. There’s only one thing I can do.”

“Galahad, I’m heading towards you now, stay put,” Roxy says. Eggsy can hear her slightly laboured breathing as she takes off at a dead run.

“Eggsy,” Victor begins, “Whatever it is you think you have to do, don’t—”

“I’m sorry, but there’s no other way,” Eggsy says, dropping Horace’s lead and trying the driver’s door. It’s unlocked, so Eggsy climbs behind the wheel and breaks open the steering panel to hotwire the engine. He gets it done in under a minute and is perversely gratified to know he’s still got it.

“Merlin,” Eggsy says as he settles behind the wheel, reverses the car from its spot, and then puts the accelerator to the floor. “You’re going to have to give me the least-populated area I can reach in five minutes. The direct route, if you please.”

“Lad…”

“I said do it!”

As Eggsy whips the car around a corner and cuts the wheel to reduce his drift, skidding just enough to graze the back bumpers of the other parked cars, he’s grimly relieved to hear Merlin’s dutiful typing in his ears.

“The Idroscalo is about seven minutes without traffic, but if you—”

“Traffic won’t be a problem. Put the street map in my view,” Eggsy commands, heading for the exit at the end of several rows of cars.

He almost makes it before Roxy darts out in front of him, hands help up like she could physically stop him by signal alone.

Eggsy slams on the brakes, the car shuddering to a stop barely a centimetre before impact with Roxy’s body.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Eggsy shouts at her as Roxy climbs into the passenger side.

“I’m not letting you do this alone,” Roxy tells him with a stubborn set to her jaw. “Now _drive_ while I attempt to disarm this thing.”

Eggsy peels the car out of the car park, breaking through the flimsy gate and tearing out onto the road to a chorus of angry honks and screeches.

“Less than five minutes,” Eggsy says as he keeps an eye on both the road and what Roxy is looking at.

She’s half-twisted out of her seat, body draped over the divider to access the bomb itself. “Victor, I could use your help here. Tell me what to do!”

As Victor calmly walks her through the tedious steps, Eggsy drives over an island and swerves into opposing traffic, taking the road up a few blocks, dodging in and out of cars, running through various traffic lights, and then making a sharp right onto the crowd-filled pavement as people scream and frantically scramble out of his way.

“Are you insane?” Merlin shouts at him, rattled.

“Just doing as the crow does,” Eggsy grimaces, clenching his jaw as the car heads down a bumpy path of stairs.

“Careful!” Roxy yells at him. “Working with highly unstable materials here!”

“Apologies,” Eggsy says, readjusting his sweaty grip on the wheel.

The outskirts of Milan pass quickly by as he takes the more unconventional scenic route, avoiding objects like trees and statues and fountains that wouldn’t be challenges for pedestrians and bicyclists but prove slightly more difficult for speeding automobiles. He tries not to jerk the car too much, but sometimes it can’t be helped, and each time it jostles Roxy enough to send her flying into the side door, glaring at him.

But as the seconds dwindle, it becomes more and more apparent that she’s not going to disarm the bomb in time.

Eggsy swallows, and with the inevitability comes a kind of calm.

Just before the next turn, he reaches across the seat to the door handle on Roxy’s side and yanks on it before sharply jerking the wheel.

“Galahad, what are you—no!” is all Roxy can get out before she’s sent flying out the door, landing in a soft bed of grass.

He chances a glance in the rear view mirror, gratified to see her shrinking figure shakily stand up in the clearing.

“Eggsy, you bastard, what are you doing!” Her shouts come through loud and furious in his ear.

“Sorry, Rox, but there’s no need for two of us to go down like this,” Eggsy says, casting a glance at the timer. Less than two minutes now.

“ _No_! No, you do not have the right to make that choice for me!” Roxy sucks in a breath, and with a painful start, Eggsy realises it’s more of a choked back sob. “Eggsy, please.”

“Eggsy,” Victor says, anguished, and that’s what finally pierces Eggsy’s stoic resolve to remain calm and collected. His view blurs; he narrowly misses careening into a wall because of it. “Please don’t do this. I only just found you.”

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy says, biting down on his lower lip until he can feel it bleeding. “I’m so sorry. Look on the bright side, yeah? We found each other once before. We can do it again.”

There are too many long moments of no response as the brownish stretch of the supposed green belt comes into view, and beyond it, the massive lake stretching out towards the horizon. Yeah, it would do nicely.

He’s just got to cross through several busy roads and bust open a guard rail to get to it.

“It’s been an honour, Galahad,” Merlin quietly says.

“Take care of them, won’t you, Merlin?” Eggsy asks. “And take care of _him_.”

“I will,” Merlin promises.

With a deep breath to ease the painful pounding of his heart, Eggsy floors the gas and the car lurches forward, crossing the several lanes with narrow misses as cars honk at him and swerve off to the sides to avoid collisions. He worries the guard rail will fence him in, but it bursts open in a scream of wrenching metal, and soon he’s clear to drive across the dead winter grass towards the water.

“Eggsy,” Victor whispers, sounding so clear and so close, Eggsy can practically feel his breath on his skin. “Eggsy, I love you. You know that right? I’ve always loved you. I always will.”

“Yeah, I know,” Eggsy says, trying to sound cavalier but failing badly. “Just as you do too. But it’s nice to hear anyway.”

Thirty seconds now.

His tyre must catch some raised kerb at the wrong angle. At the speed he’s going, it sends him hurtling through the air with the pop of blown rubber and exploding air.

Eggsy vaguely recalls something about relativity, how one could experience time at different speeds simultaneously. The sickening turn of his stomach lets him know he’s tumbling through the air very rapidly, but everything he sees and hears and knows slows down to a sluggish crawl.

And cliché though it is, he wants to remember the whole of his life, he really does, or at least all its best moments.

He thinks about Daisy’s reluctantly fond smile whenever he did something stupid to cheer her up, and tries to recall when she used to gaze up at him with so much unconditional trust as a baby.

The expression on his Mum’s face when he showed her to her new house, because no one had ever done her a good turn like that for her since Lee.

Roxy arching a brow at him after knocking him flat on his arse while sparring. Sinking into his arms after telling him that John wanted a divorce, sobbing and then laughing as he detailed all the ways they could make his life a living hell in revenge, like sewing armed department store tags into all his clothes and subscribing him to every stupid women’s magazine subscription that existed.

Merlin showing up on his doorstep with a bottle the night he had to put JB to sleep.

The day Yumi was born, how he held this small wrinkled creature in his arms for the first time. How she was so hopelessly delicate, weighing little more than air. He has never made anything so beautiful or perfect since.

He tries to recall a clear memory of Harry’s face, but all that comes to mind is Victor’s, a thousand different times and in a thousand different ways: angry, frightened, sullen, smug, in the throes of passion, and despair. His youth and all his years wrapped up into one body, one face, indivisible.

Beyond the car, the sky is so clear and blue, not a cloud in it. The sun glistens off the calm waters. There are worse last sights to go out to.

Then the dark water fills the scope of the windscreen as the lake rushes up to meet him. Eggsy looks to the timer as it moves from five to four to—

 _Come back to me_ , he thinks he hears as his hand moves towards the door handle and the car smashes into the water, everything going hot, blazingly white.


	11. Chapter 11

Harry’s office walls are red, the colour of dying blood cells. They are unlike those of any other room in his house. It only occurs to Eggsy later that Harry’s house was much like the man himself: he wore the skin of British civility, almost to the point of caricature, with its fussiness and pastoral gentry touches. The heart of him, though, was rich and pulsating, as raw and vivid as the honed edge of a knife.

Eggsy best remembers Harry in this room, because it was in this room where Harry was most himself: slouched behind his sleek desk that was almost starkly bare, everything in its place.

He sits there now, as still as a picture, staring fondly at Eggsy. His brown eyes hold a kind of impish humour and heart-aching warmth. Only much later would Eggsy realise there had been desire within them as well.

Eggsy stands up from the easy chair in the corner and walks over to the bar, pulling out a chilled mixing glass and filling it with ice cubes from the tray. A cap full of vermouth, no more, to start. Let it coat the ice to chill. Next: the gin. Good gin, go local. English distilleries are the best in the world, obviously. Stir it all for-fucking- _ever_. Stir it to your favourite song, even, for its entire span.

He strains it into a chilled glass retrieved from the refrigerator and tops it off with two green olives for garnish.

The glass is halfway to his lips before Eggsy realises: there had never been a bar or refrigerator in Harry’s office. How about that.

“You know,” Victor says, his gaze focused on Eggsy’s sweating glass, “I never used to like martinis. It was the gin, I think. Sub-par gin. Then a mate of mine opened my eyes to the wonder of artisanal English distilleries and I never looked back.”

When Eggsy glances back at the desk, he finds Harry still sitting there, a lifelike statue. Eggsy turns back to Victor and offers him his glass. Victor dips his head briefly in thanks as his fingers wrap around the stem.

“I once tried this local gin in New England,” Eggsy says as he watches Victor taste his concoction and find it satisfactory. It’s perfect, just as Victor taught him. “I don’t know, I think I was feeling nostalgic. Tasted like shit. They purposely filtered out the juniper, they said. Why in bloody hell would someone do a thing like that? I asked. They said it was so they could bring out the coriander. Fucking coriander! I like coriander in my tagines, not so much my libations.”

“This distillery,” Victor pulls out a business card from seemingly nowhere and hands it to Eggsy. The logo is vaguely familiar, all properly elegant and tasteful on eggshell linen cardstock, “was one I had part ownership of, in my first life. You probably missed that when you divested yourself of my assets.”

“Probably. Not one for business ownership, me.”

Victor nods to concede the point. “In my second life, I tasted the gin made from this distillery at uni and came to adore it like no other, never having a clue. What funny little threads we weave for ourselves without knowing it.”

Eggsy smiles. “Is that how you’ll find me? By unravelling some funny little thread from one life to the next?”

But Victor just shakes his head. “There’s no need.”

Now Eggsy frowns. “Why not?”

“Because,” Victor turns to him, martini nowhere to be found. His hands are free to bracket Eggsy against the bar and press his body up against him, smelling like juniper and gunpowder, “I know exactly where you are.”

Everything about Victor is distracting, from the heat of his body to the soft line of his lips that Eggsy just wants to part and kiss. “Then where am I?”

“You’re here,” Victor says, much to Eggsy’s confusion. “But Eggsy….”

“What?”

“You need to do something for me.”

“Anything,” Eggsy says. “Everything.”

“You need to _wake the fuck up_!” Victor shouts, his features twisting into sudden fury as he raises his hand and sends a fist right into Eggsy’s face.

Eggsy opens his eyes, which feel like they’ve been glued together.

Everything is bright. Everything hurts.

“Easy, Galahad. Steady.”

Even though he slammed his eyes shut as soon as they were seared, painful light still sinks in through the thin skin of his eyelids. He wants to bat it away, turn his face to somewhere cool and dark, but finds himself unable to locate where all the relevant parts of his body are. In fact, he cannot really feel much of his body at all, except that he knows he’s fucking _freezing_.

He’d probably worry about all that if he weren’t so tired.

“There you are. You’re alright, love. It’s a nice and slow waking up. Take all the time you need.”

Jolly good, because he’s going to head right back down from whence he came, thank you, despite needing about eight more blankets, if you please.

“It’s all stop and go, coming out of these things. He won’t be up properly for some time yet, are you sure you don’t want to get some rest yourself?” asks that kind female voice, apparently not to him.

“I’m fine right here, thank you. _Eggsy_.”

A sluggish part of himself nevertheless perks back up. Isn’t that a familiar voice. It’s at the tip of his brain.

“Eggsy, I’ll be right here. I promise.”

A warm weight presses against his head, running through his hair, over and over like he’s a beloved pet. Not that he minds. Feels nice. Distracting and….

 

_____

 

The next time he rises to consciousness, his brain’s a bit more with it, which arguably does not improve the state of his existence: judging by the distant sensation that he nominally attributes to his body, he has a feeling he’s really fucked it up this time.

He’s still so cold, only now his teeth finally have the wherewithal to chatter incessantly, but he’s either too weak or too incapacitated to do anything about it. He tries to crack open his eyes again, this time with more caution, and manages to take in a sliver of the blurry world.

Off the success of one completed physical endeavour, he tries opening his mouth to speak, managing to rip apart the seal that had formed between his dry, cracked lips only to emit nothing more than a croak.

A dark shape moves closer to him. He can’t even flinch.

“Eggsy. Are you awake?”

A hiss escapes from between his rattling teeth. His eyes water, leaking wet trails that slip down the sides of his face, which is just embarrassing.

“Hold on.”

And bless the person who must understand him anyway, because soon he is enveloped in a heavy blanket that bastes him in blissful heat. It’s _wonderful_. The best thing he’s felt in ages. Merciful hands dry the involuntary tears on his cheeks with something soft and only a little scratchy. The pulled up sleeve of a jumper.

Finally warm, it’s much easier to slide back into sleep.

 

_____

 

Eggsy wakes up.

His eyes immediately ache, too dry, and his head feels remarkably light, like someone has gone and done him the favour of disposing his brain. What use had he for it anyway?

He turns his head, just a few degrees, cheek touching the soft pillowcase.

And comes eye to bulbous eye with his nemesis.

“No,” he rasps, trying to glare through his bleary vision.

Marmite’s pink tongue comes out to moisten his own nose. He trembles excitedly, scooting forward a few centimetres towards him.

More menace this time. “ _No_!”

But Marmite senses his weakness, must smell it coming off Eggsy in droves, because he leaps to his feet and attacks.

Eggsy wails as he’s beset by foul canine breath and a disgustingly wet tongue. On reflex, he tries to bring up his arms to defend himself, only to find _both of them_ encased in thick bandages. Bugger.

The electric blanket still covers most of his body, but his feet peek out at the other end, also bundled up as tightly as if done by a mother. It does not bode well for what lies beneath. “Fuck.”

Under Marmite’s continuous assault, Eggsy next tries to look for a call button. He can see it lying at his side, on the wrong side of the blanket from his impaired hands, but he’s weak as a kitten. “Help. Help me.”

It’s enough, though, to send Victor shooting upright from whatever pile of limbs his body had collapsed into in the nearby chair. Eggsy would feel sorry for him, but he did bring that little beast and bane of Eggsy’s existence with him and thus deserves a crick in the neck, at the very least.

“ _Eggsy_.”

Upon closer inspection, though, Eggsy takes it all back: Victor is the most amazing and beautiful thing he has ever seen, staring at Eggsy with those vulnerable eyes that emote too much for his own good. He also looks like the living dead with dark zombie-like circles beneath his eyes and hair that has taken on truly incredible, electroshock dimensions.

The chair Victor springs himself from shudders as he moves to Eggsy’s bedside, scooping Marmite up and dumping him on the floor like a goddamn hero before placing his hand in a familiar weight across Eggsy’s forehead. “Are you truly awake this time?”

“Hi,” Eggsy whispers, trying to press into his hand like an affectionate cat, “You look like shit.”

“Says the man who managed to blow himself up twice in less than six months,” Victor says. Whatever fragility is in his expression quickly crystallises into swift anger. “You utter bastard.”

“Still here at least?” Eggsy tries, waving his fingers, the only bits of him that aren’t encased by endless layers of bandages, to make little movements beneath the blanket. “Yay.”

“Yes, essentially as one broken body now with less non-vital organs and more metal pins holding you together. I’ve seen paper dolls that were more robust.”

It gives Eggsy pause. He just about feels as flat as one, all his strength and energy and animus absent from his body and, in all honesty, spirit. Were it not for the steady supply of drugs pumped through his bloodstream, he doubts he’d even want to be awake now. There’s a bone-deep weariness in Victor’s face that makes Eggsy suspect he’s been down for a very long time. “How long was I out?”

“Three and a half weeks. The doctors said it would be best to keep you sedated while you recovered from the worst of it,” Victor says. “People have been in and out.”

 _But not you_ , Eggsy knows, wincing at both the span of time and how Victor has clearly been wearing thin. “That bad?”

Before Victor can open his mouth, Merlin makes his entrance. He’s probably been keeping watch until he could time it just right, because he is petty like that. “Turns out, you’ll live. If only just.”

Merlin stops on the other side of the bed across from Victor, and Eggsy is just cognisant enough to witness the _whatever_ look that transpires between them. Hazily, he recalls their Moment prior to his blowing-himself-up bit.

“Please tell me we at least got the bastards.”

The lines in Merlin’s face ease. “We got Sankovich, and a nice roundup of several of his men. Roxy’s in Croatia cleaning up shop on the rest now. One more major crime syndicate in Eastern Europe dismantled.”

“Go Rox,” Eggsy says quietly.

“The credit goes to all of you,” Merlin gently corrects. “You worked well as a team, Eggsy, despite your daft inclination for martyrdom.”

“What happened after I...?” Eggsy asks, because everything is still foggy and obviously he didn’t die for lack of trying, but that’s the extent of his certainty.

Merlin levels him with a look. “You’ve Cat to thank for being eagle-eyed enough to spot your eleventh hour sense of self-preservation.” Which would mean buying every single item off her wish list for the next five years, _at least_. Eggsy thinks he saw a Bugatti on there. “Your glasses show you attempted to exit the vehicle prior to detonation, early enough to save yourself from complete incineration, not enough to prevent some serious third degree burns and blast force trauma, to say nothing of nearly drowning in the lake anyway.”

Merlin has several decades of experience in delivering the most dire news with a tone as neutral as a beige wall, but there’s an extra bite to his words now, brittle and frail. His gaze, which he has successfully wielded to put many a recruit, agent, and sometimes even Arthur, in their place, runs Eggsy through now.

Eggsy swallows, remembering all over again how dry his mouth is. “Is that why I look like something that’s escaped the British Museum?”

“You’re lucky there was anything left to salvage at all. It’ll be a long time before you’re back to fighting weight.” _If at all_ , Merlin doesn’t say, but Eggsy knows he’s getting on in years and doesn’t bounce back from injuries like he used to. “In the interim, Arthur and I agreed it’s rather fortunate we have someone who has the skills, knowledge, and training of a Kingsman agent to step up to the occasion. As an added bonus, he’s knows the code name by heart.”

Eggsy’s gaze shifts to Victor, neatly repressing any implications of his health to prioritise being terribly smug instead. “Pity. I was rather hoping to make some of those sexy nurse fantasies a reality.”

“Well, I’m not to be doing anything that can’t be wrapped up in a day,” Victor explains. “Basically, Merlin’s dumping all the shit jobs on me to free up everyone else for all the fun.”

“Call it payback for being a little berk during training, and the decades of suffering you inflicted before you got yourself killed.” Merlin’s says, only a little awkward. Eggsy can see he’s trying.

If Victor’s quiet little smile is anything to go by, he appreciates the effort. “But at least it means I’ll be home every night to tuck you in.”

“And then...sexy nurse?” Eggsy asks hopefully.

“Don’t answer that while I’m still in the room,” Merlin commands. 

Victor looks back at Merlin innocently, but when Merlin’s glaring eyes slide off him, he gives Eggsy a covert saucy wink that is utterly delightful.

 

_____

 

However, whatever magnanimity Merlin possesses is swiftly spent in short order.

“That little twit,” Merlin complains to Eggsy as he has frequently been doing, because Eggsy can’t claim he’s got anything better to do and physically can’t escape, “managed to turn a simple, basic recon job into a full out bust of minor drug gang.”

“Sounds to me like he demonstrates initiative,” Eggsy sagely informs him.

Merlin continues like Eggsy hasn’t said anything at all. “He mouths off to me all the time. He doesn’t listen if he thinks he’s found a better way. I’ve dealt with cats that were easier to manage.”

“Well, he gets the job done, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not the point.”

Eggsy sighs. In lieu of being able to fix himself a drink, he wishes he could at least reach his morphine drip and max it out so he could blissfully drift away on the currents of Merlin’s moaning. “You act like any of this comes as a surprise. You’ve had, what, twenty something years of Harry? Surely you can tell when he’s winding you up.”

“Winding me up? _Winding me up?_ ” But then Merlin pauses, the wrinkles in his forehead growing more prominent as he ponders the notion.

“You two should really consider couples counselling,” Eggsy suggests.

“Yes, I imagine that would play out well. _My one-time lover died and came back as a twenty-something year old twink, whatever shall I do_?”

Eggsy blinks. “Wait. What?”

“Now he lives to make my life exceedingly difficult, possibly with the intent to drive me to an early grave.”

“You...and Harry…?” Eggsy’s mouth is doing his fish impression again, he knows. Good thing he’s lying down, really. And that he still can’t feel the majority of his extremities.

Merlin arches a brow. “Didn’t tell you about that one, did I?”

“ _No_!”

Merlin shows an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation before he finally takes the chair by Eggsy’s bedside in the slow painstaking motions of someone with perpetually aching joints. “It was a long time ago. Harry and I...did not come to be friends easily. It happened when we were still trying to figure out what we were, exactly.”

There were only a handful of times Eggsy has ever witnessed Harry’s and Merlin’s interactions with each other, and he can’t even really recall what they had been like, but he intimately knew Merlin’s quiet and stoic grief over the years. “So why didn’t it work out?”

“Because sometimes these things just don’t.” Merlin sighs. “We were too different. We drove each other mad and fought all the time. Eventually, we both figured out we made better friends than we ever did lovers. Made our work life a thousand times easier as a result.”

“But you love him.” It’s not a question.

“He was my best friend for thirty years. Of course I love him.”

“And I’m not...you’re not…?” Eggsy flounders, unsure of how he should be reacting. Jealousy? Guilt?

It’s clear from Merlin’s withering stare that his patience is wearing thin. “No, Eggsy. I am not in love with your walking midlife crisis, father issues, and sense of self-worth all rolled up into one.”

Eggsy glares at him. “To think you almost had my sympathies going for a minute there, you old, cranky git.”

Merlin smirks. “Let’s agree to forgo that, shall we?”

 

_____

 

It’s rather extraordinary how one little bomb can set back a lifetime’s worth of basic motor functions to those of a six-month old. Eggy has been flat on his back for weeks now staring at the same bland white ceiling, softened lights, and rustic barn walls, and only today are they going to sit him up, which, he is told, will be a highly unpleasant experience.

“Now,” the kind nurse, who turns out to be surprisingly and dowdily named Martha, says as she and a large orderly whose name tag reads _Thor_ wrap their arms around him like they’re all participating in a too-enthusiastic group huddle, “It’s alright if you’ve got to scream and shout. No one’s going to judge you for crying either.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Eggsy says.

“It’s just easier to expel those feelings than try to keep a stiff upper lip about it. Trust me, love, I’ve seen it happen again and again.”

“Maybe we can put this one off for a few,” Eggsy says into Thor’s very muscular shoulder, having, understandably, second thoughts about this whole business.

“The sooner you get this part done with, the sooner it’ll be over,” Martha says, readjusting her grip around him. “Are you ready?”

Eggsy swallows. “Not really.”

“On the count of three, then. One....two….”

He knows what’s coming before they do it, because every medical person on the planet uses the same exact trick, so he’s already tensing before they pull him up and forward. The agony shoots through his entire rib cage like a hot lance, and he sucks in a sharp, ghastly breath that might have been more of a wail, or maybe that's one of the bloody machines he’s hooked up to, and—

When he next comes to, the machines are beeping at a calmer, steadier rate. Martha is wiping his sweaty forehead with a wet flannel.

He feels like he's been thoroughly wrung out and put away wet, but he’s sitting up, the bed raised to keep him that way. Everything between his neck and legs feels compressed and uncomfortably tight so that he can breathe only shallowly. “Shit. Did I pass out?”

“Just for a few minutes. Told you not to keep it in.”

The ache in his ribs, sternum, and surprisingly, his hips, is still there, but it’s diffuse, the kind of low-grade ache that will take it’s time in wearing him down rather than overwhelm him all at once. Still, his hands tremble from the all-too-recent memory. “Will this experience have to be repeated? Because if so, then I’ll take my cue from a horse and learn to sleep standing upright at all times, thank you.”

“No, darling. There won’t be any more lying flat until you heal up. We’ll work on getting your hips to support your weight once the pelvic fractures heal, and then worry about them legs later. Why, we’ll have you walking again inside of four months, I’m certain of it.”

Martha gives him a sweetly encouraging smile that lights up her sea glass eyes, but Eggsy hears the word _months_ and, realising how many more days of this mind-numbing boredom and frustration there will be with no guarantee of an end, suddenly wonders: what’s the point?

“Pardon me, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

When Eggsy looks over to Victor, he’s standing in the open doorway in full Kingsman regalia, not a ridiculous hair harmed on his ridiculous head either. The glasses lend him an authority his youthful face might not otherwise have. The pinstripe gives him a further impossible length he absolutely does not need. No more awkward, discomforted fidgeting. He's never looked more sure of himself and his place in the world.

Eggsy feels like an archaeologist who’s finally brushed enough sand off some secretly buried artifact to see it for what it is. Victor is a vision. He was born for this, truly.

He tries to sit up even more, ignoring the resultant pain, a smile brimming over his lips. “Not at all. Do come in.”

Victor crosses the floor and takes a seat right on the mattress, the faint trace of his cologne smelling like something light and green, enticing enough that Eggsy just wants to bury his nose in his neck and inhale great big whiffs of it. “I see you’ve decided to stop being lazy.”

“Yes, well, the lie in was nice, but I can see the telly a lot better like this.”

Victor just studies him for an uncomfortably long time, and Eggsy cannot fathom what he sees. “Everything alright?”

Eggsy gives him an exasperated look for ruining a good joke by becoming serious. “Everything is _fine_. Never better. Honestly.”

When Victor reaches out to take one of Eggsy’s hands within his own, it is only then Eggsy realises it was bunched into a white-knuckled fist. Gently, Victor unfurls it, frowning as he runs his fingers over the deep red crescent indentations in his palm.

Eggsy can’t meet his silently inquiring gaze anymore. “It’s just taking a bit more time and energy than I’m used to.”

“It won’t be like this forever,” Victor says, earnestly. “I’m merely keeping the seat warm for you, you know.”

“You’re doing quite a bit more than that,” Eggys says, “much to Merlin’s eternal complaint.” 

Victor does have the good grace to appear slightly abashed. “I know. I’m sorry, but it’s really...he has me on training wheels. I _know_ I can do more. I’ve done it before.”

“I know,” Eggsy assures him. “That wasn’t an order to stop. In fact, I think you ought to continue. The bastard gets too smug when someone doesn’t keep him on his toes every once in awhile.”

“You’re a terrible influence,” Victor says, but smiles in pleasure anyway.

Eggsy scoffs. “You say that like you needed any to begin with.”

Victor concedes this with a slight tip to his head before needing no further prompting to fearlessly lean forward and kiss Eggsy’s dry, cracked lips.

 

_____

 

It’s almost Christmas, and Eggsy doesn’t want to spend the holiday in medical again. At some point he must have complained enough or Martha can’t stand to see his pouting face a second more, they agree to let him convalesce at home with a high degree of supervision. It’s an immediately terrible idea for several reasons, the first being that the actual transport back to his house is painful and exhausting, and Eggsy proceeds to spend the next eight hours down for the count.

When he wakes up, the greyish daylight streaks in through the windows, highlighting the peak of late afternoon. He feels muzzy and out of sorts, his rhythm all but shot to ribbons, but at least there is comfort in being in his own bed. Victor will likely read him the riot act tonight, however, when he learns what Eggsy has done.

He’s so disoriented, he doesn’t even realise there’s another body in the bed next to him until he turns his head and sees Daisy laid out, reading a battered old copy of _The Origins of Totalitarianism_. She’s recently cut her hair, it now ends razor sharp beneath her chin. It would make her look very mature were it not for her pearl-clutchingly short miniskirt and the combat boots she still wears even with her feet up on the bed.

Before he can open his mouth, however, she beats him to the punch. “Mum’s downstairs. When your work called, she insisted on being a part of your care. The nurse is explaining what she needs to do.”

His mum. _Shit_. “Dais….”

Daisy closes her book and glares at him. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re a tailor, Eggs. I dare you.”

“I can’t tell you.”

Something goes hard and flinty in her eye. “You’re a liar. You’ve lied for my entire life.”

“I…I know.” Eggsy flounders, at a loss for proper excuses and justifications now. In a fit of desperation, he blurts out, “Mum knows.”

“Of course she does,” Daisy says darkly, tossing the book onto the mattress and sitting fully up. “But she’s always had a bleeding heart for her lads, hasn’t she?”

Eggsy glares at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I won’t have you jerking her around like my tosspot of a father, especially when you’re up to your eyeballs in God knows what. Drugs, I’d assume, to afford all this.”

For a surreal moment that makes him feel like he’s been jettisoned out of his body, Eggsy wants to start laughing hysterically, but he’s so beyond stung by such an accusation that his mouth reels on without him as it so frequently does. “I’m not a drug dealer, Daisy! I’m a fucking spy!”

Silence.

At least Daisy doesn’t immediately reject the notion. Her eyes are wide, only a little in incredulity, but she’s clever enough to remember all the times Eggsy’s been injured, all the missing holidays and family occasions, other moments of odd behaviour when he let his guise slip just a little too much.

He sees the moment when she puts it all together and it makes too much sense to be able to deny it. She slumps back against the headboard, the fight gone out of her. “Fucking hell.”

“Quite.” He nods in agreement.

“How many times have you almost died?”

“I’ve lost count.”

“Have you ever killed a man?”

He grimaces. “Only if I had to.”

“Do you really get to travel around the world?”

“Yep.”

“Is it like James Bond with all the gadgets and weapons?”

Eggsy can’t help but smile. “A little.”

Daisy frowns, though. “If you do get killed, will we ever know how? Will we get a body to bury? Or can we expect someone to show up at our door in a nice suit with a medal.”

He knows she’s envisioning some smartly-dressed military officer, but he can’t help but think back to all those years ago when a man in a different sort of suit and a different sort of medal came round. Eggsy can’t really recall the incident itself, though, but he’s meticulously gathered what everyone’s said about it until it eventually became almost a false memory in and of itself: he imagines Harry about his age now, humbled and saddened by defeat, holding out his father’s medal to a young boy who wouldn’t understand its magnitude until much, much later.

Eggsy solemnly meets her eyes. “You won’t be left in the dark like Mum and I were, I promise.”

 

_____

 

While the thought of his own mother wanting to personally look after him warms the very parts inside of him that still crave insatiable amounts of parental attention, it’s actually quite horrifying in reality as a middle-aged man: the last time she literally spoon fed him his food, he’d been a baby and hadn’t even been been self-conscious yet.

“Oh, stop sulking. You got yourself into this mess in the first place.” Michelle rolls her eyes while managing to not spill a drop of soup from the spoon that hovers in the air between them. Today, it’s homemade chicken and rice, made on Eggsy’s own stove, which hadn’t seen so much rigourous use since he had a full family living beneath his roof. Despite the undignified delivery method, it smells enticing, but he’s got appearances to keep up here.

“And I’ve got a rotation of perfectly serviceable nurses to clean up after me—literally.” Eggsy grimaces. “Besides, you shouldn’t be waiting hand and foot on anyone, least of all me.”

“I know my boundaries, Eggsy, I’m not an idiot. The nurse is still downstairs to handle all things below the belt.” Eggsy squawks in embarrassment, but Michelle goes on, heedless. “But for God’s sake, I nearly lost you for good this time! Do you know what that would have done to us?”

The outrage gradually recedes from his expression, replaced by guilt. “I’m sorry, Mum. I wouldn’t have done anything like that if lives weren’t at stake.”

Michelle sighs, and that sorrowful resigned expression settles over her features. “I know. You’re so much like your father, you are. Don’t think I’ll ever get over it.” She is, however, a shrewd opportunist, edging the spoon closer. “So let me spend what time I can with my eldest while I’ve still got him, yeah?”

Narrowing his eyes, Eggsy reluctantly opens his mouth and allows himself to be fed.

Michelle, who can also be just a little bit mean with her revenge, waits until he’s got a mouth full of soup to spring it on him. “So this young man, Victor, you’re now keeping in the house. Is he just a short-term guest or are you shagging him?”

Eggsy barely manages to keep from choking or spitting it all out. “Mum,” he wheezes.

“Oh, please, Eggsy. You can’t fool me, I _know_ you,” Michelle says. “Two sets of toothbrushes and toiletries in your bath. Guest bed ain’t been touched in weeks.”

“Were you...are you _snooping_?” Eggsy accuses. Thank God he made sure certain infamous items were transferred to more secure locations.

“I was just showing the nurse where to find everything!” Michelle defends. “And you’re avoiding the question. He’s wearing the same suits you do, so I’ve got an inkling about where you two met, but it’s clear as day this ain’t them one-offs you go through like Kleenex, is it?”

Feeling like his back is against the wall with nowhere to go (a too literal state of affairs), Eggsy wishes he could squirm, but even that is denied to him. “And what if...I were to say...it was serious and not some desperate bid to feel young again? Because it’s not.”

Michelle settles the bowl in her lap and drops the spoon back into it, levelling Eggsy with a frank look that Eggsy can only hold for microseconds at a time. “He’s very young, Eggsy.”

Eggsy scowls. “Yeah, got that one, thanks.”

“Are you saying you love this boy?”

Like swallowing glass, this is. “...yeah. Probably.”

“ _Probably_?”

“Alright, fine! Yes! I do. Happy?”

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” Michelle scolds. Eggsy, chastened, closes his mouth. Michelle takes a deep breath, shaking her head in the way Eggsy recognises when she doesn’t know what to do with him. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted for you is to be happy. If this boy does it for you, babe, then...okay. Not that you ever needed my blessing.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy tentatively asks.

“We’ve had a few chats,” Michelle nonchalantly says as she smooths out the creases in her blouse. “He seems like a very nice, polite young man, I think. Clearly gone for you already, which raises his star in my book. Could use a few more meals, though.”

It’s as ringing an endorsement as he could have hoped for. Eggsy smiles. “Maybe I could bring him round for Sunday dinners then and let you fatten him up.”

“That would be nice, babe. But not that lil’ rodent of his. Them kinds give me the creeps.” Michelle shudders.

“ _Right_?” Eggsy says, vindicated.

 

_____

 

On Christmas morning, Eggsy is awoken by _an audience_ : Victor, Roxy, Daisy, Michelle, and fucking Marmite to round things off, surrounding him on the bed like he’s actually the Christmas goose and didn’t get the memo. The fact he hadn’t even picked up on their approach until Victor had gently shaken him awake speaks volumes as to how much he’s lost his edge, fucking hell.

“Happy Christmas!” Michelle declares brightly as soon as he blinks away the last vestiges of sleep.

“Why,” Eggsy whines, giving them all a gimlet look and wishing he had a free arm to rub his eyes. The days of lying about are starting to get to him. “What time is it?” There isn’t much light streaming in through the windows, which means it’s far too early for this shit.

“Time for you to get up so we can all open gifts,” Roxy says, grinning evilly because she knows exactly what he’s thinking. Then, because she is a terrible, awful human being, she leans forward and places a paper crown atop his head.

“I hate you,” he hisses at her.

“Come now,” Victor says. He reaches up in what Eggsy thinks is to mercifully remove the crown, but instead only adjusts it. “That’s not in the Christmas spirit.”

“I hate you all,” Eggsy tells them before focusing on Marmite in particular, stretched out in the valley between his two useless legs. He’s wearing a tiny Father Christmas suit and doesn’t seem at all bothered by that fact. “Especially you.”

“We know it’s a pain in the arse to move you about too much,” Daisy says, heedless of her brother’s moaning. “So, we brought Christmas to you.”

Michelle and Daisy part the blockade around him just enough for him to see: a handsome Christmas tree set up in the corner of the bedroom, merrily decorated with ornaments and tinsel and softly aglow with string lights. Beneath its branches are a small mound of presents. There’s an evergreen scent infused in the air he hadn’t quite noticed before.

Eggsy remains a bit speechless, so Victor just leans in to quietly murmur, “Slept right through all the setup. We didn’t even have to be quiet about it. Happy Christmas, darling.” 

Finally, Eggsy swallows down the lump in his throat and realises something. “Aren’t you supposed to be up at your parents’ today?”

But Victor just looks at him like he’s off his rocker. “There’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than here.”

“Ugh, you two,” Daisy remarks, looking vaguely nauseated. “Let’s open up gifts before I’m put off my breakfast.”

She takes great delight in opening up her own gifts for him, including a very garish, bright yellow tie in addition to a more serious, sophisticated one, a book entitled, _Meat is Murder_ , and, most touching of all, a framed photo of Yumi, one that must have been taken very recently.

He had spoken with Yumi briefly yesterday to wish her an early happy Christmas, because he knew he would hardly get a chance to connect with her on the actual day itself, but his vision of her hadn’t changed from that little, sprightly girl with missing teeth and shockingly straight black hair. Now he’s confronted with the hard reality: Yumi has grown so very much since he last saw her, less childish puppy fat, more sharper angles of maturity. She’s still wearing her school uniform. Someone had her pose in a park sitting on a large moss-covered rock, hands primly folded together in her lap. She beams up at the camera with her open, trusting smile, a girl untouched by larger sorrows. Eggsy stares at the photo for a very long time.

“I asked Asami to take it,” Daisy explains in the wake of Eggsy’s silence. “Since you don’t seem to have any recent ones about.”

“Thank you,” Eggsy finally says, blinking away the heaviness that overcomes him to dredge up a smile at Daisy. He can only hope it conveys more than his clumsy grasp on words could ever do.

“Yeah, yeah,” Daisy waves off, but she smiles softly at him anyway.

In the afternoon, Michelle abuses the long surface of his dresser by setting up platters of food on it, buffet-style, and they all sit either in the bed on in chairs within the bedroom, eating Christmas dinner in their laps, probably getting crumbs all over the floors and mattress that the housekeeper will have a fit over. Victor has to cut up Eggsy’s food into small bites and feed them to him like a child because every time Daisy does it, she makes the stupid airplane noises and he tries to bite her fingers off in retaliation.

It’s not the most elegant of Christmases Eggsy has ever had, but it’s certainly one of the nicer ones, injured or no.

“Alright, alright,” Michelle says, once the plates have mostly been scraped clean. “You know the tradition, children.”

No one quite groans aloud, but it’s a near thing.

“Tradition?” Victor asks in confusion.

“We have to go around and say what we’re thankful for,” Eggsy says, very put upon. “Started it after V-Day because a lot of things changed after that. Some bad, yes, but a lot of good too.”

And he had Harry to thank for so much of it, he cannot say, but from the contemplative expression on Victor’s face, Eggsy thinks he gets it anyway.

“Why don’t you start, babe?” Michelle suggests, looking to him.

Eggsy sighs reluctantly. “Well, obviously I’m thankful for being alive by the skin of my teeth.” He glances at Victor. “And for friends new and old that have come into it.”

Daisy snorts. “You can just say your boyfriend, you know. Your very young boyfriend, I should add.”

“Daisy,” Michelle chides. “Just for that, you go next.”

“Fine. I’m thankful that my brother’s alive despite his own routine idiocy.” Eggsy rolls his eyes. “And I’m thankful for new...clarity on some things,” she ends vaguely, and only Eggsy and Michelle really get it.

Daisy pats his hand in assurance.

“Well,” Michelle says, patting Eggsy’s foot as well like he’s some sort of good luck charm (and wouldn't that be ironic), “I’m thankful _all_ my babies are alive, and that Eggsy has found someone to share his life with. Maybe he’ll be less inclined to try and get himself killed every chance he gets now.”

"I'm sensing a theme here," Eggsy complains.

At least Roxy goes for a little variety. “I’m thankful for having several places to be on Christmas, and several types of family to spend it with.”

“Your gent’s waiting, I take it?” Eggsy asks her.

“A nice quiet evening sorted, yes,” Roxy says, her whole face softly beaming in happiness. Eggsy is going to tease her about it for ages. “He’s spending the day with the Spencers first.”

When all eyes fall expectantly to Victor, he takes his time in spite of being the centre of attention in more ways than one.

“I suppose I’m thankful that life has all these funny little threads running all throughout it.”

Eggsy startles, looking sharply to him, but Victor only arches a curious brow as he continues,“That for all its challenges, the connective tissue is made of some very stern stuff. So much so that I’ve often found myself come full circle, and all the more grateful for it.”

For Eggsy, his words are spoken with a weight that encompasses _everything_. Several lifetimes’ worth of tragedy and fortuitousness.

They share a long look that probably appears quite soppy (he thinks he vaguely hears Daisy making retching noises and Michelle telling her to quit it), but everyone else can go hang, because, by God, they are long overdue.

 

_____

 

Eventually, the leftovers are put into Tupperware containers and divided among the lot, plates and platters are cleaned and put away, Roxy departs for a promised Christmas evening with Arthur, and Michelle carts a half-asleep Daisy off, but not after giving him and Victor hugs (gentle for Eggsy) and cheek kisses (much to Victor's shock).

“Be gentle with him,” Michelle says to Victor earnestly. “Be kind.”

Victor blinks, no doubted stunned by the warmest reception he’s had from Michelle in _decades_ , but his response, when it comes, is dead serious. “Always.”

Now, they finally get to be alone. Even Marmite is curled up and asleep in his new doggy bed right next to the radiator in the living room. The lit up tree is the only illumination in the room, creating a profuse, incandescent light that softens everything, makes it intimate, like they are the only two people left in the world.

Victor stretches out his long, lean body beside Eggsy’s propped up one, already a good fifty pages into _Sense and Sensibility_ , sucking his lower lip between his teeth, and radiating the satisfactory contentment of a good day. It’s rather nice like this: they already fit comfortably beside each other like old, well-worn gloves.

Victor must sense Eggsy’s stare, because he glances up from his book, lifting a brow in inquiry. “What?”

“Did you ever own part of a gin distillery?”

Victor’s brows furrow in brief confusion. “None I can recall. Why?”

Eggsy just gives a brief shake of his head. “No reason. Just had a funny dream once that you did.”

And that’s that. Victor returns to his book. Eggsy’s closes his eyes, already worn out. By the time he’s almost drifting off, however, he hears:

“I like gin, though. Still do, I guess. I remember having my first gin cocktail of St Germain and seltzer in this little humble pub just outside London that brewed its own. Actually, it was that night I realised I didn’t want to be surgeon and decided to join the Army instead.”

Fast forward a few years, and it would be Victor’s military affiliation that would bring him to Eggsy’s attention. Funny little threads indeed. If Victor had stayed true to his original career path, if he had never punched his commanding officer...would their paths have ever crossed? The thought of how easy it would have been to have never found him again steals Eggsy’s breath away.

Victor must pick up on his distress, because he discards his book and asks, “Are you alright?”

“I knew I was in love with you over gin,” Eggsy suddenly says. “I mean, I was in full-blown lust the moment I saw you striking a ridiculous pose outside the station, but the other thing, the _more_...I suspect it’d been building up ever since. I just didn’t realise it until...you know, martinis. What I really mean to say, in an incredibly roundabout, clumsy manner, and while not under threat of dying any time soon, which actually makes things like this a lot harder to do in some respects...is that I do. Love you. Still. I love you.”

In response, Victor leans in and presses a long, gentle kiss upon his lips. “Yeah, I know. But it’s nice to hear anyway.”

“Touché.” Eggsy grins. He grins all into Victor’s second kiss, and third, and fourth, and then he’s too busy trying to taste the inside of his mouth, moaning when Victor has to eventually pull back, spirit willing, flesh weakened and all. “God, being injured really sucks. The things I would do to you if I weren’t broken in a thousand different places right now.”

“It’s a good thing I want you for more than just your body.”

“You never did fulfill your promise for sexy nurse times,” Eggsy still feels the need to point out.

“You’ve been sleeping nearly twenty hours a day, so there hasn’t really been much of an appreciative audience,” Victor reminds him.

“You know,” Eggsy says casually. “You don’t have to be a monk on my account.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Just because I can’t really _do_ much of anything right now doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes or ardent appreciation.”

Victor thinks about it. “Are you asking to watch?”

Pretenses dropped faster than his pants had done in his wilder days, Eggsy asks, “Can I?”

In answer, Victor sits up and turns to face Eggsy with a cheeky look in his eye. “Only if you tell me what to do.”

If he weren’t under the effects of god knows how many heavy medications, Eggsy thinks his brain might have exploded from sheer excitement then and there. “Take it all off then.”

Victor’s hands move to the sash of his dressing gown to unknot it, sliding out of one side, then the other, until the gown pools around his legs on the bed. He’s wearing the soft dark blue pyjamas Michelle bought for him that look almost black in the dim light, contrasting with the smooth paleness of his skin, the soft glow in his eyes. He had impatiently slipped it on without evening unbuttoning it earlier, but now he happily takes his time in pushing each little button through its eyelet.

By degrees, the rest of him is revealed: toned broad chest, abs, then when the elastic waistband of the pyjama bottoms are slipped over his hipbones, the hardening column of flesh nestled within dark, coarse curls. Some fading bruises still mar his skin, souvenirs of the missions on which he now embarks. If he keeps this up, scars will adorn it as well, a new, smooth canvas on which to paint another lifetime’s worth of experiences.

“Run your hand down your chest. Imagine it’s me touching you,” Eggsy says, following the trail of Victor’s hand with visceral longing, the way his fingers barely skim over the stiffening, dark nipples of his chest, over the light smattering of hair, down his stomach, contracting sharply with a sucked in breath. “Don’t touch your cock.”

Victor’s hand pauses just below his navel, the slightest tremble betraying him.

Eggsy just waits and looks his fill, takes his time with it, as if to memorise every freckle and dip and beautifully crafted line. “Lick your fingers and then give your nipples a good pinch each.”

A pink tongue darts out to wet the pads of Victor’s thumb and index finger each time he takes a nipple between them and gives it a good tweak, producing an audible exhalation.

“How sensitive are you?” Eggsy asks, eying the increased flush of Victor’s cheeks.

“Not overly, but...like this, it’s….”

“Yes?”

“It feels good.”

“I bet. You can stroke yourself. Just once. Come on, make it a good one.”

Victor closes his eyes as he lowers his hand and wraps it around the base of his cock, slowly running down its length, thumbing the head, and then pausing with a bitten off groan.

Eggsy watches the aftershock reverberate through his frame in the slight tensing of muscles, the way his eyes briefly flutter shut. “What are you thinking about?”

“How much I want your mouth on me,” Victor whispers.

“Luckily, my jaw works just fine. If you’re good, I’ll let you feed me your cock,” Eggsy promises. “But for now, I want you to get your fingers incredibly, soaking wet and then I want to watch you open yourself up until you can fit those four you boasted about.”

Victor keeps his eyes open and locked with Eggsy’s as his fingers disappear into his mouth, far past the second knuckle, and emerge shining with spit. He repeats the motion, over and over, until saliva gloriously drips down his hand.

“Now turn around and show me that pretty arse of yours,” Eggsy commands. “I want to see everything.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Cheeky shit.

With a bit of shuffling around until Victor is on his elbows and knees, arse up in the air, Eggsy is treated to the lovely sight of Victor’s backside: all those sculpted muscles of his back rippling, and the very smooth, very supple, and very firm flesh of his bottom. It’s an experience made all the better when Victor’s fingers trace the line between his cheeks, skimming his hole before daring to dip in with just the tip of his finger.

“Oh, I know you can do better than that,” Eggsy tuts, and is rewarded when Victor presses two fingers into himself as deep as they’ll go, twisting them as he pulls out and plunges them back in again, producing a choked off noise from his throat. “God, I love how you’re always hungry for it.” 

“I’ve missed you,” Victor says, hips moving to thrust more of himself on his fingers. “I’ve really missed your cock fucking me open. Your mouth. Your hands.”

“I’ve missed touching you and tasting you. I want to taste you again. Soon. Come on, add a third,” Eggsy encourages.

Victor’s ring finger is added to the mix, an even tighter fit at first, but then soon he’s roughly fucking himself on all three of his fingers with drying spit, even spreading them out wider to accommodate that inevitable fourth. His fully hard cock hangs heavy between his legs, untouched, waiting to be enveloped by Eggsy’s mouth.

“Too much?” Eggsy asks.

But Victor just shakes his head. “No. About ten seconds away from asking for the Queen of Sweden’s royal implements.”

 _Well._ It’s such a wholly intriguing idea that Eggsy is about to suggest a pause in the night’s activities to fetch the lube when there’s only the briefest of knocks on the bedroom door before it flies open.

“Babe, sorry to come back so late, but I think Daisy left her….oh!”

It takes a few moments for Michelle to process what she’s seeing, and when she does, her eyes widen and she leaps back, shielding her eyes like someone’s sprayed them with mace. “ _Oh!_ Fucking hell! _Jesus!_ ”

“Oh dear God.” Victor practically has a seizure, almost falling off the bed in his mad scramble to quickly cover himself in the duvet.

“Mum!” Eggsy gasps in horror. “Haven’t you heard of _knocking?!_ ”

“Sorry, _sorry_! I didn’t think you even _could_...oh God, sorry!” Michelle says, fully turned around now, arms practically raised over her head in full out, _don’t shoot_ surrender. “Daisy can just do without! Uh, carry on!”

Her footsteps pound down the stairs and the front door slams shut not seconds later.

Eggsy and Victor remain perfectly paralysed in trauma for several long moments after the last vibrations of the slam fade.

“Well,” Eggsy faintly says. “You really do have a habit of making the _worst_ impressions on my mum.”

“I’m honestly not sure which time is worse at this point.” Victor’s voice is muffled from the small mountain of duvet he’s buried himself beneath.

Eggsy isn't sure either. His cheeks still feel hot with fresh humiliation. “Alright, look. We work for a spy agency. We can assume entirely new identities and be on the other side of the world by tomorrow.”

“It’s already tomorrow over there,” the duvet says miserably.

“You know what I mean!” Eggsy says with exasperation.

And then, because the night isn’t horrific enough, Marmite comes scampering up the stairs, and upon finding their bedroom door wide open, eagerly wanders in and hops up on the bed, planting himself right between Eggsy’s injured legs.

Eggsy glares, choosing to place all the blame of the night's horror on him. “Some guard dog you are.”

 

_____

 

As the weeks progress, so, too, does Eggsy’s healing. As Martha promised, through repeated rounds of torture disguised as physical therapy, he regains the use of his arms first, and then has to learn how to painfully walk again, wobbly as a foal, first with one of those old people walkers, then crutches.

Most of his severe burns are concentrated on his left leg, the bit of him closest to the car at the time of the explosion. A significant portion of muscle had to be debrided and a stretch of skin grafted on. It left behind an eyesore, certainly, that throbs constantly, but Eggsy is more concerned about its larger implications.

Because it’s becoming apparent he’s never going to be able to properly walk again.

No one really says anything about that particular elephant limping about in the room. Merlin makes no mention of it. Victor always frames the issue as a matter of _when_ Eggsy will want to reclaim his title, even as he’s being sent on longer, more involved missions now that Eggsy is more self-sufficient at home. No one outside of Arthur and Roxy are even aware of Galahad’s stand-in while Eggsy recovers.

Maybe it’s time to make the temporary more permanent.

And to think not so many months ago, Eggsy was worried about what _Victor_ was going to do with all his free time.

In fact, it’s what Eggsy intends to speak to Merlin about one evening when he stops by Merlin’s private offices, only to find both he and Victor sprawled artlessly in two chairs, stupid drunken smiles plastered across their flushed faces, and a nearly empty bottle scotch sitting between them.

“I see you two have been making strides,” Eggsy remarks, torn between amusement and envy at being able to drink, which he’s still not allowed to do.

“It was Victor’s idea,” Merlin mutters, running a hand down his face. “Cornered me and practically forced a bottle down my throat.”

Victor’s head lolls towards him and he beams. “Ah, hullo, darling. Merlin and I were just reminiscing about the good old days, but I had to break down all his usual barriers first.” Then his bleary gaze manages to focus on Eggsy’s accessory. “Is that new?”

“This? Yeah.” Instead of leaning against his usual boring metal crutch, Eggsy has a sweet pimp cane made of handsome dark-stained oak wood with an elaborately embellished platinum handle, commissioned from Kingsman’s R&D department weeks ago. He may have been secretly harbouring fantasies of having one all his life and now he’s got the best excuse: an actual handicap. Like all good Kingsman accessories, it has a few hidden tricks as well. “If I’ve got to be a gimp, I might as well do it in style.”

“You look very debonair,” Victor tells him, letting his gaze, a bit glazed over as it is, transparently roam down his frame.

It makes Eggsy preen a bit before remembering why he’s here. “Yeah, about that, actually….”

“Don’t say another word, I’ve already found the solution,” Merlin says, swinging a bit in his chair from side to side like an antsy child.

“You don’t even know what I was going to—”

“You’re trying to resign because you think you’re now useless as a field agent,” Merlin says.

Eggsy frowns. “I mean, _yeah_ , but you don’t—”

“You’re going to resign?” Victor asks, shocked, as he struggles to sit up but forgets his chair has wheels and ends up pushing himself a few feet away instead. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“I mean, the end result was inevitable, wasn’t it? I’m not suddenly going to regrow new tissue.” Eggsy fidgets uncomfortable, nervously adjusting the weight on his feet, bouncing the bottom of his cane on the ground until Merlin glares at him. “And Victor’s been doing an absolutely stunning job. The solution seems obvious.”

“And what will you do then?” Victor asks, still looking as if Eggsy has just told him he accidentally killed his dog, which would be ridiculous. If Eggsy were to kill his dog, it would be intentional.

“I haven’t got that far yet,” Eggsy admits, but then cops to another secret fantasy. “Maybe be one of those young, hip retirees who...travels the world on his yacht and does smug little articles for travel verticals about retiring early because I made wise investments.” It sounds much nicer than sitting in his dressing gown all day, every day, and moping while eating sleeve after sleeve of chocolate digestives.

Victor looks at him like he’s lost his goddamned mind, which is fair.

At least until Merlin suddenly throws his head back and laughs.

“What?” Eggsy asks, dreading where this is going.

“That isn’t what you’re going to be doing. That’s what _I’m_ going to be doing.” And before Eggsy can point out the obvious, Merlin continues, “I’ve had enough of dealing with you wankers. I’m retiring, which means there’s an open Merlin position to fill.”

Eggsy gawps, then, because he knows _exactly_ where Merlin is heading, states very firmly, with finality, “Oh no. Absolutely fucking _not_!”

“Oh yes,” Merlin says gleefully, lifting his brows in challenge. “What else have you got going on?”

“What?” Victor asks in confusion. “What’s going on?”

“This miserable bastard,” Eggsy points at Merlin, “thinks he can strong-arm me into taking over his job. _No_! I can’t be Merlin! I don’t have the patience for the amount of shit you put up with.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful solution!” Victor says cheerfully, which isn’t helping.

“See?” Merlin says, “We’re all in agreement.”

“We are _not_ all in agreement!” Eggsy cries, feeling like he’s shouting in an empty room for all the good his protests make.

“No one is good at being Merlin at first. Even I wasn’t,” Merlin says. “You learn, as with any job. And you have a good team here to support you.”

“Then give any one of them the job!” Eggsy says. “They would probably like the promotion.”

“Nope,” Merlin says. “Agent experience preferred. You’re our only candidate. It’s now yours by default. Congratulations, Merlin! I’m thinking about going to Greece next week.”

“I now have many fond memories of Santorini,” Victor muses. “If they still exist, I could recommend you a few places.”

“Is anyone even _listening_ to me?” Eggsy hisses at them.

Judging from the way they continue talking about the best little Greek restaurants on the island and a little hidden beach with the most gorgeously hued water, apparently not.

 

_____

 

“I hate Merlin,” Eggsy says to anyone who might be listening for about the fifteenth time since this whole bloody mission began.

“We have to work on your self-esteem issues,” Roxy says, because her sense of humour has lately devolved into lame Mum jokes (for which he entirely blames Arthur). On his computer screen, he watches her handily fool the electronic reader to give her admittance to the executive office so she can access the CEO’s desktop computer, logging in and plugging in a small drive into one of its ports. “Time for you to go to work, Merlin.”

For a split second, Eggsy doesn’t react, and then, like always, he starts in realisation that _he’s_ being addressed. Fuck. Eggsy opens up one of the many handy tools Merlin had left behind in his retirement to swiftly and easily clone an entire organisation’s server’s worth of data in just a few minutes.

And then abruptly, Actual Merlin cuts in on the comms. “You’re using the old version, Merlin. I’ve updated it just before I left. Didn’t you see?”

“Is that Merlin?” Roxy asks. “Or, well, I mean, Other Merlin. Older Merlin. God, this is going to get confusing real fast.”

Eggsy rolls his eyes, “I don’t like that version because there’s a great big bug in it that freezes up the whole system. Stop backseat Merlin-ing again, Merlin. Aren’t you supposed to be on a boat somewhere in the Mediterranean by now?”

“I am,” Merlin says. “There’s no reason why I can’t do both. And there’s no bug. My code doesn’t have bugs. You’re obviously doing something wrong.”

“You wouldn’t know retirement if it came and knocked you flat on your arse,” Eggsy grumbles. “There _is_ a bug. I’ll show you later when I’m not trying to, oh, do a job here, for which you _aren’t_ helping, by the way. Program executed. ETA should be in four minutes. Think you can sit tight, Lancelot?”

Roxy briefly peers over the monitor to check for any passing guards or nighttime janitors. “It’ll be tight, but could do.”

“The new version wouldn’t leave Lancelot with such a narrow window,” Merlin reminds him, just to be extra annoying.

“New version wouldn’t have given Lancelot _any_ window because of the great, big stinking dung beetle of a bug in it,” Eggsy says. “Galahad, status report.”

“In great peril,” Victor says over the line, but before Eggsy can start raising all the flags and alarms, he moans, “I’m being mobbed by lonely trophy wives. They won’t stop stroking me a like a prized pet.”

“Oh, stop whining. You love attention,” Merlin says.

Eggsy smirks, bringing up the view of Victor in the company’s large, grandiose lobby where they are currently holding their latest little charity shindig. Victor has found a quiet corner away from most of the crowd, but already Eggsy sees two different women heading towards him again with hungry gleams in their eyes. “You _are_ very pretty.”

“They keep wanting me to give them tennis lessons. I don’t even play tennis.” Like prey sensing himself being hunted, Victor darts a glance at the women zeroing in on him, then quickly searches about for an escape route. “I thought firmly establishing I belonged to Lancelot was supposed to ward them off.”

“No, if anything, that just makes them determined to steal you away,” Eggsy tells him. “You’re like a baby gazelle that got separated from its mother and the rest of the herd.”

“It’s true,” Roxy concurs. “Don’t worry, darling. I should be finished momentarily and then I’ll return to re-stake my claim. I do hope you can ward them off until then.”

“Would have happened sooner if my successor would start using the most updated versions I worked hard to leave for him,” Merlin says.

“For the last time…” Eggsy begins, but is cut off when he spots something in the many camera views he has displayed on his screens: a big, foreboding van pulling up in the back of the building and depositing a group of armed men. “Ah, looks like we’ve been made.”

Must have been a backdoor alarm he hadn’t picked up on, _fuck_. But then, he is still new at this. Mistakes are going to be made.

“Shit. How long?” Roxy asks.

“Perhaps three minutes? They’ll likely take the freight lift to be discreet.”

“Well, looks like I’m in for a bit of a tussle,” Roxy says as she rises from her seat and readies herself for the confrontation.

“Not in that gorgeous Elie Saab, you’re not,” Eggsy vows, swivelling in his chair to retrieve the special items from the bag he brought with him. “Hold up, Lancelot, I’ll take care of this. Galahad, if you’d care to join me, it’ll give you a nice reprieve from the lionesses.”

“With pleasure,” Victor says, relieved. “Making my way there now.”

“Wait,” Merlin says with a heavy hint of suspicion. “You’re not at headquarters!”

“Of course not,” Eggsy tells him as he tightens the straps of his leg brace so he can move fast without the cane, readies his gun, and pushes open the back doors of the van. He can see the men just a little ways ahead. “This Merlin is an Action Merlin.”

“You’re completely defeating the entire purpose of Merlin!” Merlin accuses.

“Yeah, well, you already gave me the job. Can’t take it back now!” Eggsy crows, leaping onto the asphalt with a grin of anticipation.

 

_____

 

At the end of March, Yumi finally comes home. When Eggsy picks her at Heathrow, he’s a bit taken aback to see she’s already as tall as his shoulder, looks more and more like her mother, and painfully now calls him _Dad_ , but her hugs are ten times stronger, which is all he truly cares about.

On the drive back to Stanhope, she fills him in on how the school year went (very well, but she hates going on Saturdays), her skiing trip (she loves it and wants to go back next year), the new trend of cat ears, tails, _and whiskers_ on all clothes, accessories, and even in makeup (he will never understand Tokyo fashion, ever), the wedding preparations (Asami and Derek have secured a venue in States and even agreed to let Yumi stay with Eggsy during the honeymoon, which is the first Eggsy’s heard of it, not that he’s complaining), and her dog, Taro’s, training (not especially well, the dog isn’t the brightest creature, but he’s huge and fluffy, which seems to make up for a lot of sins).

“And here we are, Plum. Home, sweet home. Not too much has changed about it, actually.” When, Eggsy shows her through the front door, Victor is waiting tentatively by the stairs, trying to act casual, but all his tells broadcast his nervousness.

Yumi spots him right away and pauses, her body curving inwards in shyness.

Eggsy takes a deep breath and lays a hand on her shoulder to coax her forward. “Darling, I want you to meet a very special friend of mine. You know, the one I told you lives and works with me? This is Victor Arden.”

For all his nerves, however, Victor puts on all his many charms, smoothly straightening up and taking Yumi’s hand. “Hello, Ms Unwin. I’ve heard many great things about you from your father. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Hello,” Yumi says politely, taking his hand and smiling up at him before looking back at Eggsy. “Are you two boyfriends?”

Both Victor and Eggsy freeze in shock.

Yumi isn’t impressed. “Dad, I’m twelve. I know about these things now.”

Victor catches his eye and can’t help the small smile that sneaks across his mouth. “Does it bother you if we are?”

“No,” Yumi says simply, shaking her head like the very question is ridiculous. “Mum’s got Derek. Dad should have someone too.”

Unexpectedly overcome for words, Eggsy can only cup the back of her head and press a grateful kiss to her silky hair.

“Well,” Victor tells her, rescuing Eggsy from a potentially far too heavy moment, bless him, “I heard you wanted your father to get another puppy. There’s someone else I’d like you to meet. He’s very lazy though. Likes to lie in the sun all day. Come on.”

“Did you get one?” Yumi asks eagerly as she follows him to the back of the house where Marmite enjoys stretching out in the one square patch of floor that gets unfiltered sunlight nearly all year round.

“Well, he’s a bit older than a puppy now, but still about the size of one,” Victor says. “How do you feel about Chihuahuas?”

“Dad doesn’t like them, but I don’t mind. What’s his name?”

“Er, Sir Marmite.”

“ _Marmite_? Why?”

Eggsy can practically hear Victor’s internal sigh. “It’s a perfectly serviceable name.”

 

_____

 

It’s still too early in the morning, but already the sun is starting to brighten the sky, painting a dreamy quality of light over the bedroom that’s lost a lot of its sparseness in the last few months. It’s the little things: a burgundy dressing gown thrown over a new chair in the corner. More silver cufflinks littering the top of the dresser. A garish wooden figurine from the Bahamas. A ridiculous cartoon cat figurine from Tokyo. Suspiciously saccharine dog paintings on the walls that Eggsy would never have picked out in a million years.

There’s a lot more photographs now, too, depicting a wide range of faces and places: the time Eggsy and Victor took Yumi up to Yorkshire, along with Michelle, Daisy, Roxy, Arthur, and Roxy’s girls. Of Michelle and Daisy having a picnic out on the Heath. Victor and Marmite walking along the beach in Marseilles. A stolen photographed moment of Marmite curled up asleep on an equally snoozing Eggsy that Eggsy still claims is photoshopped. Victor and Merlin laying out in the sun on the deck of Merlin’s actual honest-to-God yacht off the coast of Spain.

And then there are the photographs of just them: at the park, in the house, out and about in the world. Reading books, laughing too widely, sipping tea, glaring, smirking, gazing at each other without being aware of anyone else, a hand caught upon the other’s waist, at the small of the back, around the neck, to the chest. And then the most tender of all: a hand to a cheek, cupping a jaw, foreheads pressed together, eyes closed.

Eggsy turns his head to look over at Victor, still asleep with not a stitch on, a sheet barely maintaining his modesty, draped over his hip. His fluffy hair is fanned out across the pillow several inches from his actual scalp. There’s a red, circular bruise on his shoulder from Eggsy’s teeth. That had been nice. If he were to lift the sheet a bit, he could retrace all the marks left along his hip too, and maybe in the inner fleshy swells of his thighs.

His fond reminiscing is interrupted by the bright chirp of his mobile. He picks it up off the bedside and sees he has an over-punctuated text from Tilde, who shows up in his contacts as _ABBA_.

Half-curious, half-dreading what it will be (she’s been known to send some fairly risqué photos, apropos of nothing), he opens it.

_In London next week for State visit! New toys!! Shall I stop one night for a little fun visit? >:-)_

In response, he turns his phone towards Victor, frames it to be more suggestive than the softcore porn it pretty much is (those, he saves for himself), and snaps an image, sending it back. _Think I’m off the market for foreseeable future, love. Sorry. Xx_

The response is immediate: _Looks tasty! Pity, though! Unless he wants to join in too?_

Eggsy smirks. _Think I’m going to keep this one for myself._

_A girl had to try! But in any case, congratulations and good luck! I will send many gifts to bring you two much ecstasy!! <3_

Eggsy’s smirk is wiped from his face.

Despite several, increasingly pleading messages thereafter to insist she really need not go to the trouble, several packages show up on his doorstep the next week, addressed to them both. How she found out Victor’s name, Eggsy will never know.

Unfortunately, it means that Victor thinks nothing of opening one of them up before Eggsy realises who they’re from. When he sees what’s inside, his brows practically disappear into his hair, and he quickly closes the flaps of the cardboard, paling. “...I may be mistaken, but I do believe the Royal Family of Sweden has sent us a...sizeable box of dicks.”

Eggsy quickly moves to wrest the box from his unresisting hands. “Let’s just put these in the attic, and never speak of this again. Best not open the others. For your sanity.”

“Right.” Victor nods in ready agreement, opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “Right.”

But as Eggsy climbs the stairs with the box and passes his bedroom on his way to the attic, he pauses and maybe takes a curious peek through the flaps.

Well.

If the box maybe finds its home on the floor of their wardrobe rather than in the attic...only the two of them need to know.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on tumblr: [futuredescending.tumblr.com](http://futuredescending.tumblr.com)


End file.
